SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy (93 page)

She snuggled into his side. “Don’t say that. I’m glad you came back, I couldn’t live without you. I’ll try to be more courageous. I’m such a little fool.”

“You’re not. It’s smart to be afraid of vampires like Charles Upton. And that foreigner…Jacques. He’s…there’s something dreadful about him. I can sense evil and that man’s the epitome of evil. Now I think he knows about me.”

“What will you do? You can’t control the dreams.”

She knew he had no control over what happened when he fell asleep. When he dreamed, though it was not every night, it was as if his soul had been plundered and sent flying away. He opened his eyes in the dreams on an alien place. He didn’t want to go there. He had nothing to say about it.

“There’s nothing I can do,” he said, answering her, “but try to find out where they are so Mentor can go there and take care of Upton once and for all.”

“But now one of them knows about your dream spying.”

“Spying.” He laughed a little, but it was without humor. “I guess that’s what it is, spying(??? Should it be “—spying”). And he knows all right. He can see things even most vampires can’t. He looked at me with the coldest eyes, as if he was taking my measure.”

“We might as well get up,” Danielle said. “It’s almost light.” She drove more than fifty miles to her job at the university. She had to leave much earlier than he did.

As they dressed and prepared to wake Eli for breakfast, a knock came on the front door. Malachi looked at Danielle. “It must be my mom.”

Danielle gave a wry smile. She knew her husband could sense who it was at closed doors, could tell when someone was coming down the drive before human ears could hear the vehicles, and could even mind read when he wanted to. If he said the person at their door this early was his mother, then it was his mother.

She followed him and stood behind as he opened the door. Dell didn’t come to them this early, ever.

“Come to the house,” she said immediately, panic in her eyes. “Your father’s ill.”

Without trying to do it, Malachi searched his mother’s mind instantly and found out the problem. “He’s had a stroke!”

Dell nodded and abruptly turned to rush across the pasture back to her home, Malachi right behind. Danielle stood in the doorway watching them race across the land. They moved so fast she could hardly see the blurs of their passing. She turned then to get her baby. She would join them to see about Ryan, Malachi’s father.

This was terrible. Not being vampire, Ryan was prey to earthly disease. He had been diagnosed as having high blood pressure and took pills for it, but he hadn’t been well for a long time.

Once she’d reached her in-laws’ house, she found the door standing open to a rising sun that flooded golden across the living room floor. She carried a sleepy, cranky Eli in her arms. He smelled of ammonia and she knew his diaper was wet. She hadn’t taken the time to change him. He still wore pajamas and his blond hair was mussed.

She could hear them in the bedroom and went that direction while hushing and soothing her toddler.

The scene when she entered the bedroom tore at her heart. Malachi stood on one side of the bed and Dell on the other. Between them lay Ryan struggling to speak. Half of his face was paralyzed so that his words came out garbled. The right half his mouth moved, half his facial muscles. He had gripped his left arm with his good right arm and was lifting it over and over only to drop it again like a lead weight onto the mattress.

Her eyes filled with tears as she moved closer to Malachi. Then she witnessed some of the vampire magic. Dell leaned over the bed talking in a low, soft voice. She put her hands on her husband’s chest lightly and brought her face down close to his own. Ryan stopped struggling and went quiet. He stared into his wife’s eyes and then his eyelids fluttered and shut. He slept.

Dell straightened, tears of blood running down her face. Danielle turned Eli’s face into her breast, shielding him from the scene. Blood tears! She had never seen such an awful thing. Dell’s grief was worse to see than her father-in-law’s paralyzed body.

“Go back home,” Malachi said to her, gently taking her arm and pushing her toward the door. “Mom and I will take care of Dad.”

“I’ll call in,” Danielle said, thinking she’d be needed.

“No, go on to work. Drop Eli off at day school. There’s nothing you can do.”

“Will you call an ambulance?”

Malachi glanced at his mother, who shook her head. Her tears still flowed, her shoulders were sagged, and her hands hung at her sides.

“No, we can take care of him. Go. Eli shouldn’t be here.”

Danielle stumbled from the room and through the patch of new sunlight to the front porch. She took a deep breath.

Eli squirmed in her hold and whined softly. “It’s okay, Eli. Mama will change you and get you something to eat. Don’t cry, it’s all right.”

Walking back through the long grasses she realized her shoes were soaked with the damp. She’d have to change them. She’d have to ready Eli and hurry. Malachi was right. There was nothing she could do here.

Chapter 7

Malachi’s mother knew what to do. By the next day Malachi had brought home a wheelchair, a portable unit with guardrails for the toilet, and a hospital bed with hydraulic motors.

Mentor, who knew as much as any general practitioner, for he had lived hundreds of years and cared for many human ailments, told them what his father would need. Dell had feared if she put her husband into a hospital, he’d never come out again. And she also feared she wouldn’t be able to control her tears, her blood tears, and someone would discover her secret and want to run tests on her.

It appeared the stroke had paralyzed the entire left side of Ryan, leaving him nearly immobile. When he tried to speak, his words were unintelligible. His speech center was affected, but Mentor assured them that with some therapy and work, he would probably be able to talk again.

But he would never walk. His face, shoulder, arm, left torso, and leg were useless to him. With help he could be put onto the toilet, but they would have to bathe him, feed him for a while, and take care of all his needs.

“The best you can do,” Mentor said, “is let him know you love him. This is a terrible blow for anyone, but especially for an active man such as Ryan. He won’t be plowing fields on the tractor, cutting hay and baling it, riding his horse, caring for the cattle, or even running his vet clinic.”

“I’ll do all that,” Malachi said. “Except for the clinic.” He expected his father would have to close it down. Malachi was not a veterinarian. There would be no one to take over.

“Can’t we do anything for him?” Dell asked, close to tears again. She had been crying for hours and it sapped her strength.

“I’m afraid we can’t,” Mentor said. “You knew you’d have to deal with things of this sort one day.” He hadn’t said it unkindly, but Dell flinched nevertheless.

Taking umbrage at what she saw as criticism for marrying a human, Dell retaliated. “You’ll have to deal with it, too! I’m not the only one.”

Mentor blinked from her sudden rage. “Yes,” he said. “I know. I know. I wasn’t trying to hurt you, Dell. I’m sorry I said that.”

Malachi knew they were talking about Mentor’s union with the woman Bette. He was so glad he had not been born vampire and been made to choose between a vampire mate and a human one. At least he and Danielle were both mortal. If he outlived her, it would not be for long. A mercy.

As the days drew out, Malachi devoted all his time to his father. After getting his degree from Sam Houston University, he had not gone on for a graduate degree at A & M the way his wife had done. He had returned to the ranch and helped his father increase the cattle herd until the profit from selling the calves each year was enough to claim a tidy profit for both families. On their two hundred acres and another six hundred they leased, he and Ryan now owned seven hundred head and not just any hybrid beef, either. From the beginning Ryan had raised Brahmas, the sweet-faced creamy white, humpbacked cattle that brought a good price at market. Some years they made as much lending out their prize Brahma bulls to inseminate other herds as they made from the spring calving season.

Malachi could handle it all, though for one man the ranch work meant long hard hours. But he would miss his father’s guiding hand, his strong back, his wise conversations as they rode their horses out to check the herds and watering tanks and feed.

Today, after checking the herds on both their own land and the leased pastures, Malachi returned to take over for his mother so she could hurry to Sam Houston University where she worked as librarian. His parents worked hard, always had for as long as he could remember. It wasn’t the ranch that demanded so much income to run. It was his mother’s blood that she had to buy from the Predators in Dallas. She was a Natural and did not kill in order to live. The blood was expensive and that expense forced all Naturals to work constantly to afford to live as nearly human as possible.

As soon as his mother left, Malachi stooped next to his father’s wheelchair and smiled up at him. “How’s it going, Dad?”

He knew Ryan could not yet reply. His mind wanted to talk to him, to reply, and in his mind he knew what he had to say, but he couldn’t get the words from his head to his mouth. Malachi and his mother had begun reading his mind, though they replied to him verbally.

This really pisses me off, his father thought, though he could not articulate the words.

“I know, Dad. It’s only for a while. Mentor thinks you’ll be able to talk again soon. Just try.”

Ryan’s lips opened and just one half of it moved while the other half hung down like a wet rag over his teeth. He grunted a few times, but could not get out a word of any kind.

Malachi patted his arm. “Okay, that’s enough. Don’t get angry, it’s not good for you. Listen, the back fence needs some mending. Should I use cedar posts or buy steel stakes for the barbed wire?”

Cedar, his father thought instantly. Looks better, lasts for years, easier on a cow’s hide if she tries to break it down.

“Right. Cedar it’ll be.” Malachi stood and went to the coffee table to retrieve a book. He’d been reading aloud to his father to pass the hours they spent together. He knew his father liked being read to, especially histories of all eras.

As he read to him from a book about Lewis and Clark and their explorations, the day waned, shadows fell, and still Malachi did not turn on the lights. He could see without them, his eyesight excelling those of any human.

Twilight slipped in and as Malachi reached the end of a chapter he was reading, Dell came home to prepare her husband dinner. She immediately switched on the overhead lights.

“Hello, darling.” She came to Ryan to kiss his flaccid cheek.

I love you. Malachi read his father’s thoughts for his mother. He closed the book, marking the place with a book marker, and rose from the easy chair he’d pulled closer to his father’s wheelchair.

“I’ll go home now,” he said, stretching his back muscles as he stood. “I didn’t know it was so late.”

Dell kissed him on the cheek too. He saw the pain of grief still in her eyes and turned away, unable to bear it. She hadn’t looked the same since his father’s stroke. As a vampire she possessed great powers, but none of them could heal the man she loved. It ate at her like an ulcerous lesion.

“See you tomorrow, Dad,” Malachi said.

Thank you, son
.

Malachi smiled at him and left the house. As he walked across the wide pasture toward his own home, he saw the lights on in the windows and knew Danielle was busy with dinner as well. Eli would be chasing Harper, the dog. In that house things were as they should be. But his father’s illness was evidence that things could change any moment. Eli could fall, hurt himself. The dog could turn mean and undisciplined, maybe bite one of them. Danielle could wreck the car on her long drive to the university.

Stop it, he told himself. He wasn’t normally a negative person and this was out of character for him. His family would be all right, if he had anything to do with it. He wouldn’t let harm come to them. Every night in his dreams he strove to do as Mentor had instructed, trying to move about the big dark house Upton occupied, trying to get to a window or go through a door to the outside. So far he hadn’t managed to do it, but he would. He would!

Once Mentor knew where the old rogue vampire lived, he could take Predators with him to lay waste. Malachi had told him the human with Upton was French, he was positive. He had heard him speak and it was English, but with an accent.

So they might be in France. But where in France, that was the question needing answering. Or was the man French Canadian, and Upton’s new Predator army camped right on their northern border? He might be a Frenchman, all right, but not in France at all. It was a conundrum.

As soon as Malachi walked into the house, Eli ran for his legs. He latched himself there giggling and wouldn’t let his father take a step. They called him “Gecko Boy” because he could hold on like a lizard. Malachi reached down and swooped his son into his arms. “Hold me, will you, Gecko Boy?”

Danielle came from the kitchen, flour on her hands. She looked to be wearing white gloves, as the flour stood out in contrast to her smooth brown skin. She smiled at him and his heart did a triple beat. She still made him faint with desire. Just being in her presence raised his morale by a thousand percent. He no longer thought about loss and grief. It was probably silly, but she turned dark days light for him, pain to health, depression to joy.

“I’m making fajitas,” she said. She was of Mexican-American descent and could make all the dishes her mother had taught her. He loved Mexican food, could eat gallons of it. His mouth began to water at the thought of fajitas and salsa and guacamole.

“Chicken or beef?”

“Beef, of course.” She grinned. “We’re in the cattle business, right?”

He watched her return to the kitchen before settling Eli onto his feet. “Gotta take a shower, Sport. I’ll be back in a minute.” He mentally flinched after using the new nickname he called his son. It was the same nickname his Dad had used for him when he was a boy.