LEGIONS OF THE DARK (VAMPIRE NATIONS CHRONICLES) (15 page)

Ross was also feared. Mentor alone could not control the many thousands of vampires in the entire Southwest section of the country. Although the mutated porphyria cells that created them was a rare disease, it seemed to spawn more and more down through the generations, until their kind had gained in numbers. No one vampire could control them all, no matter how powerful. Ross not only watched over the bank's operation, the shipments that went out to the Naturals and Cravens who paid for the blood, and to Predators who needed the extra supplies to help control their hunger, Ross also acted as the chief enforcer over renegades. He was, in essence, Mentor's right-hand man, though neither of them spoke about the arrangement or admitted to it.

Of the two kinds of vampires below Ross, he despised the Cravens most. They lived on welfare, handouts, and begging. In order to pay for their blood, the strongest ones sometimes resorted to petty theft and drug trafficking. They lurked in dark alleyways with little bags of poison to sell, too weak to kill for their living, but not too weak to prey in another way on society.

Ross disliked the Cravens for their poverty and had been determined to make himself wealthy. Though wealth mattered little to most Predators, who were driven by their hunger to the point where ambition died away, Ross saw wealth as a tool that could protect him if things ever got out of hand. Wealth gave him choices, had bought him safe places in the world where he might hide, and it would insure his safety if his operation was ever found out.

It was common knowledge that Ross hated the Cravens. In the early 1900s he'd tried to eradicate the Cravens from the region. It was a famous bloodbath in vampire history. He had been stopped from completing his vendetta by Mentor and a few other ancient Predators who tracked Ross down and demanded he desist. Didn't he know that if they made the choice in death to be a Craven, it had something to do with the soul? If the choice was theirs to make, didn't he know he had no right to take that choice away?

Mentor knew he and Ross suffered an uneasy alliance. Ross thought him soft, a philosophical creature wasting his time with newly made vampires and old, helpless vampires and suicidal vampires. These were creatures Ross would have dispatched without a thought. Get them out of the way, would have been his wish. If they can't make it on their own, we take risks keeping them alive. What do you do when you see a slug on the pavement? You step on it, he was often quoted as saying. You step on it and walk away. That was his philosophy.

"You think because some of us choose to be weak and sick and pitiful that it's ordained?" Ross had asked, furious that he was being held back from the slaughter of the Cravens by Mentor.

"What else could it mean?" Mentor had responded.

"This means all of you believe there is some higher power instructing our existence. Well, you're wrong! We're alone! There is no God, don't you know that?"

It finally came down to a decree. Ross, called Brenton at that time, would leave the Cravens alone or they would all take measures against him. He could not hope to defeat so many as powerful as he. He relented, grumbling and cursing, but never forgave Mentor for his part. "I could have rid the world of them," he'd said. And Mentor had replied, "Never. There will always be those who choose the Craven way. That is just the way it is, and it's not up to you to change it."

Now he stood in Mentor's living room, towering above him, his body youthful, strong, and beautiful.

Mentor noted how Ross always chose the most beautiful male body he could find. He was as conceited as he was arrogant and dangerous. He was, it occurred to Mentor, the very embodiment of the modem day fictional vampire, with his rarified ways, haughty manners, and impeccable dress. Mentor thought he might have adopted the fiction, seeing himself as romantic, erotic, and dreaded. A ruse, Mentor decided. Or an illusion he favored, but that was all. He was simply a wicked, greedy, ambitious fool who happened to be a vampire leader because he was the smartest, the most ruthless.

Mentor, rested now and ready for him, rose from the sofa, and stood face-to-face with the other Predator. "You called for this meeting. Let's get on with it."

"I don't give a damn about you either," Ross said, twisting his beautiful mouth to show his fangs.

Mentor blinked, catching his own reflection in the wet white glisten of the other vampire's teeth. He knew this was one of Ross' newest tricks to entrance a prey. That he thought it would work on someone twice his age just went to show how pride could go before a fall. If he wanted, Mentor could have wrung forth from his being a fury that would have blasted Ross clear across the room and left him defenseless.

Instead of rising to the bait, Mentor walked to the dead fireplace and placed his hand on the mantel. He loved to show this Predator how unafraid he was of him. "Now that we have the polite greetings out of the way, what do you want?"

Ross turned his back for Mentor to contemplate as he spoke. "There have been quiet inquiries about the bank. Hank called me from Houston. Didn't he call you? He said he was going to."

"Not yet. What did he say the inquiries concerning your bank were about?"

Ross picked up a book from the table near the sofa. He dusted it off, though it was not dusty, read the title, and dropped it. "Our shipments."

"So?" Mentor was losing patience. Didn't the Predator know he was wasting valuable time? There was a new vampire being born right this minute without Mentor there to guide him through death. Mentor resented Ross' appearance and the talk about the blood bank. It was his problem. What possible motive did he have for coming to Mentor?

Ross turned so fast that a mortal would not have seen it happen, though Mentor did. "You accuse me of pride, but it's you who think yourself indispensable! I come here to ask for a minute, and you whine in your head about waste. I should rip you apart for that."

"If you think that you can, jump, Froggy."

Ross glared at him before he saw Mentor's small smile, and then he began to laugh. "Froggy!" He laughed some more, his anger all but gone.

"All right, it was rude of me to get impatient," Mentor said. "It must be serious if you've come to tell me personally. Now, what does it mean? I really do have to leave soon."

"It's a woman who runs an HIV testing lab. She has access to all the records of all the blood banks. Federal law requires the blood be tested, I'm sure you know that. She's discovered we ship out blood to other cities before it gets tested. She's called some of my people. She even knows it's been going on for years. She searched back records. She knows something isn't right."

Mentor realized this was indeed serious news. "Do you know if she's told anyone her suspicions?"

"We know she called a doctor in hematology at Hank's hospital. It's how he found out. I haven't sent anyone to investigate her yet. For all we know, she's already called in some federal agency or something. It could undermine our whole operation."

"Yes, it could." The thought of the loss of their blood bank threw Mentor into a sudden anxiety. Even he was nourished by the blood Ross supplied. The strongest-willed vampire, deprived of fresh blood, would turn on the closest victim to satiate his hunger. Naturals could only defeat their craving by having local supplies sold to them. If left to their own devices, many of them would be driven to hunt humans.

Mentor knew he had to do it. He was able to walk among mankind and pass easily as one of them. He made it his number one rule not to separate himself from the world, except for the youth, who changed their fads so often he could never keep up with them. Without staying close to adult society, he could never hope to gain the trust of their souls when the time came to choose the eternal path.

"All right, tell me what you know."

For the next few minutes Ross gave him details, addresses, and other data. Mentor knew what he had to do. He would approach the woman who was about to uncover their secret and he would mesmerize her into forgetting. That way she'd come to no harm. If he failed, Ross would simply kill her and cover up any trail she'd uncovered.

Mesmerizing was an ancient gift that was as real as a cloud, a leaf, or a stream. Magicians, bound by earthly magic, considered mesmerizing another word for hypnotism, but it was far beyond that. Other words for mesmerize were to spellbind, stupefy, and to find entry. To mesmerize people, Mentor had to enter their minds, meld with their souls, and change their memories as one would wipe a slate clean. It had to be done by a master, or it was considerably dangerous. In the beginning when he was first learning how, Mentor had accidentally wiped a few minds that were never the same again.

More guilt. And guilt he had no choice but to live with.

When Ross had gone, Mentor left his home and stood outside, feeling the early morning wind on his face. Earlier, when Dolan had left, the sky had been clearing, but now a few white clouds with dark underbellies coasted near the moon. In another city they might portend rain, but in Dallas they would no doubt scatter and disappear before even a drop of moisture could condense.

He would see the woman, Bette Kinyo, on the morrow. Tonight he had urgent business. It was not in the city, but out in the South Texas countryside near the border with Mexico. A family of Naturals lived there, and tonight one of the women was undergoing the change. The disease had begun earlier in the day when they'd first called for Mentor's help. Now he must hurry, or his charge would be lost. She might become a Predator. That was the fear of her family.

She might anyway, despite his guidance, but at least he would have tried to dissuade her. There were too many of them already, especially along the border where he knew more murders were going unsolved than in all the rest of the state. The authorities thought it was the work of a serial killer who left his victims horribly mutilated, but Mentor and his kind knew what it really was. Too many Predators in the area and too few sources of blood.

What they did not need was one more running loose.

He must be on his way.

With a flick of his will and a mental explosion that changed the very atomic makeup of his being, Mentor dissipated into the Dallas night wind an insubstantial shadow among the clouds sailing south. Just before he'd left the earthly plain, he'd heard the telephone in his house ringing and knew it must be Hank.

It was not Dell's birthday, that day was in June, after graduation, but it felt like it. On Saturday morning when she woke, Eddie stood at the end of her bed. She'd slept so deeply that she felt now as if she were coming up from a black well of unconsciousness where nothing had ever lived.

She'd heard someone call her name and opened her eyes. "What are you doing?" she asked, coming up onto her elbows. Eddie was bending over the foot of her bed and tugging at her covers.

Her parents were dressed, standing in the center of the room together, and in her father's hand dangled his car keys. "If you'll hurry and get your clothes on, we'll take you to see something special," he said.

"What?" she asked. "What's going on?"

"Tell her," her mother said to her father.

Her father shook his head, grinning slyly. "We wanted you to see for yourself. So hurry up, we're waiting. And no reading our minds, young lady."

She rushed back to her bedroom and stripped off her pajamas. She put on shorts and a sleeveless shirt.

She almost ran into Eddie when she hurried into the hall. She grabbed him by the back of his shirt. "Tell me what it is!"

"No way. Let's go, they're already in the car."

They drove from the neighborhood, through the suburbs of Dallas, and south, out of the city. When the terrain changed to wheat and cotton farms, Dell could not control her curiosity any longer. "Where are we going? Is it a long way?" She remembered being a little child again, asking her parents every few minutes how far it was to their destination. Vacations must have been tedious for her parents, she realized, having children whine at them for hours on end.

"It's not far now," her father said.

"You're gonna like it," Eddie said, punching her in the arm lightly.

It was a horse! She knew it was a horse. It had to be! She had begged for a horse since she was eight years old. They had never had a pet, not even a dog, and she'd yearned for an animal for years. Her parents told her that most pets sensed they were different and were never happy around them. They would cry and scratch at themselves, they would turn in circles going nuts, and once let outside, they would probably disappear.

Dell had seen it happen before her change when Eddie played over at a friend's house. If his friend had a pet, even if it was a hamster, the animal went bonkers trying to get away from Eddie and the scent the animal picked up that he was not quite human anymore. Eddie always made a joke out of it, saying animals just didn't like him and that was all right, because he didn't like them either.

Gosh, even Carolyn had a pet. It was a big, fat, fluffy cat she named VeryPretty. "That's a dumb name," Dell had said, rubbing the cat's fur and feeling it purr beneath her hands.

"VeryPretty doesn't think so," Carolyn said. "She likes it.”