LEGIONS OF THE DARK (VAMPIRE NATIONS CHRONICLES) (36 page)

When Mentor left him, Ross headed into a violent Fort Worth barrio where gangs drew blood every night of the week. He would prey there, taking some young buck and draining him dry before dropping him into a dumpster or a ditch. "I hate that stuff we call blood in the blood bank," he said, leaving Mentor. "It's colored water compared to the real thing. You ought to try it again sometime. Maybe you wouldn't act so grouchy."

Mentor shook his head and went on his way into the heart of Dallas, moving slowly toward Charles Upton. Work to do, always there was work to do.

~*~

George answered the door. He bowed his head and led Mentor inside to wait in a comfortable room overflowing with rich gilt, ornate cornices, a hammered tin ceiling, and a dead fireplace filled with a vase of lilacs. Where Charles had found lilacs Mentor could not fathom. They must have been trucked in from some northern clime where the heat did not kill them.

"Hello, and how are you?" Charles asked, bustling into the room like a man half his age. "I don't have much time, I have a phone call coming in a few minutes."

"We have to talk, Charles. Forget the business." He noticed a faint smear of blood on the old man's cheek. He wondered about it, but dared not probe the other vampire's mind just yet.

"We have nothing to talk about. You do your job, and I'll do mine. Now if you'll excuse me . . ." He turned to leave, dismissing Mentor.

"Come back here." Mentor did not raise his voice, but his command could not be disobeyed when he sent it with the power of his mind.

Charles turned slowly. "I don't like you coming here," he said. "I didn't like you with me when I died, and I haven't liked you any better since. You shouldn't even be allowed to call yourself vampire. All you want to do is help people. It's a weakness I really despise."

"You and several others," Mentor said, thinking of Ross. At least Ross could be made to listen to reason—either with talk or with battle—but he feared Upton could not.

"All right, all right, what do you want? You're wasting my time."

"What do you plan to do, Upton? Take over the world? And what's that blood doing on your face? Have you been killing?"

Upon squinted his eyes. All his sores had healed, strength returned to his muscles, and even his face had relaxed, though his lips had long since forgotten how to smile with genuine feeling. He stalked closer, his fists balled at his sides. "I kill when I want to. You can't stop me. I'll take over the world if I want, too. Do you hear me, Mentor? When it's time and when everything is in place, I will indeed rule this world. It may take me years, decades, even a century, but it will be mine. Is that what you wanted to hear? Is that what you feared in the dark dream when I was made, when I embraced the Predator's life? That one day I would rule over even you?"

"I don't think that will ever happen."

"Won't it?" Upton turned on his heel, but before he reached the doorway Mentor was at his side. He had him by the arm, staying him.

"Upton, I tried to talk to you. I've tried to understand the agony you suffered in your human form and believed you could get over it now that you have a second chance. But you nurse the past, don't you? You blame the universe. You blame God."

"God!" Upton spat out the word. "Never speak to me of a god. One who let me shrivel up and break out in sores. One who lets children get run over, molested, and mauled and mutilated. One who lets the world suffer floods and fires and winds and pestilence. What God?"

Mentor sighed. He dropped his hand from Upton's arm. "I'm sorry, Charles, that you feel that way. You have to come with me now."

"With you? I'm not going anywhere with you. I'm not spending another minute on you."

Mentor moved as fast as light, wrapping his arms around the old man, holding him to his chest, his face in Upton's, so that his words would not be mistaken. "We're going away, Upton. To a place where you'll be safe and the world will be safe from you."

"I will not. Let me go."

George ran down the hall and stopped at the doorway, where the two men were locked together. "Mr. Upton?"

Mentor turned his head and looked at George. "Stay here as long as you wish. Say good-bye to Mr. Upton. This time it's forever. If you ever speak of this, I'll come for you."

"George, get him off me!"

"Let's go, Upton. It's time to go."

Mentor whisked his charge from the house, through the door that he opened by the force of his mind. Once outside, he took Upton with him straight up through the Dallas night sky. They sped faster than any machine man had ever devised until they were high above the Earth, watching it turn. The last time Mentor had done this had been with Dell. It was at least a year ago on another summer night in the endless stream of summer nights that were to come.

Upton turned and twisted, bit and spat and cried. Mentor hung onto him. They sailed down, down, dropping with dizzying speed toward Thailand. Toward the only safe place for Charles Upton, the vampire who possessed no control, no soul, no feeling for the human race from whence he'd been born.

"That's only part of it. And you'll never stop killing. What I want is for you to be a creature who understands consequences. And either you do and don't care, or you don't possess the capacity to understand. You must stay here until we find out if you'll ever change. The only other alternative is to kill you."

"If you leave me here, I'll make you pay, Mentor. I swear it."

Mentor paused at the prison cell door and stared at the old man. He shuddered inside. He had tapped Upton's mind and knew he not only meant it, but he would work every single second of his existence to make it true.

"You can try," Mentor said finally. "But I would advise against that route. Stay here and listen to the monks, Charles. Learn from them. Maybe one day you can be free." Even as he said it, Mentor knew he was wrong. Upton could never be free.

Upton spat at his captors as they padlocked his chains to the damp, smelly wall. "I will never speak to these mothers of monsters again," he shouted, twisting away from them. "I'll kill them the first chance I get.”

Mentor thought he would never get that chance.

Walking down the corridor, he glanced in on Madeline and took her abuse before leaving her to her papers and her writing. In the chapel, while red candles burned and the subtle scent of incense wafted through the air, Mentor knelt on the hard stone floor and hung his head. There was no evidence of a crucifix or any other religious artifact in the monastery, but Mentor knew it didn't matter. Prayers had been said here for hundreds of years. Maybe the God Upton didn't believe in would hear Mentor's pleas.

Being vampire was no easier than being human. It was harder. It was always a hard-fought battle between evil desire and higher morality, no matter what type of vampire you became, Natural, Craven, or Predator.

Do you hear me? Mentor cried out silently. Have you ever heard any of us and have you any mercy for us in the end?

After his meditation, Mentor rose and left the monastery. In his mind he could hear Upton calling after him, threatening, weeping, begging. He would probably have to remain in his cell until the end of time. Mentor did not believe Predators such as he ever reformed. He was a human born bad, with evil in his heart, and there it remained. While Madeline grieved through a thousand years, Upton would plan and scheme, rant and rave. Let him. If he ever devised an escape, they would all track him down and set him on fire, scattering his being to the wind.

~*~

Ross sat in the office waiting for the acting president of Upton Enterprises. David would do as he said. He had no choice.

Ross did not bother to rise when David entered the room. He immediately took over his mind, leading him to sit in a chair opposite. He put suggestions and commands into the other man's brain so that he would do as instructed, the way someone would who has been successfully hypnotized. Mentor called it mesmerizing. Ross just called it control.

I will supply a body, he said telepathically, from people I have in a Houston hospital. They will contact you when it's ready. There will be a closed casket funeral for Charles Upton. You will arrange the funeral and return to take over the company. Your press release will say what the death certificate says: Upton died of his disease. From that day forward, you will report to me only. I am your boss, your master. All profits will be put into my account in Switzerland. You will run things for me, handle all daily affairs, and you will never question either your former employer's death or my command. Do you understand?

David nodded mechanically.

"That's fine, then," Ross said, standing and speaking aloud. "Tomorrow you will send out word Charles Upton is dead. He is dead. You understand?"

"Yes, sir."

Ross patted the man on the back and left the office. Upton Towers in Houston would have been dwarfed by the new building they'd bought in Dallas. It rose in gold glass from the center of the Dallas financial district, towering over lesser buildings. And it was all his with Upton out of the way. Sometimes Mentor did him great favors without even realizing it.

Ross smiled and punched the elevator button for the lobby. He hoped Upton was enjoying his sojourn in prison. He never should have betrayed a business partner that way. It had been his undoing.

~*~

Charles leaned against the cold stone in his cell concentrating on moving his mind beyond the monastery's walls. He could not reach either Ross or Mentor, but after several attempts, he was able to connect with David.

He tried to converse with him, but it was as if he were roaming a vacant bank vault. Finally, he settled for reading the memories in David's mind. When he got to a recent memory involving Ross, Upton halted, biting down on his tongue until it bled into his mouth.

He was going to be reported dead. No one would look for him. They were going to supply a body, a death certificate, and tell the press the wealthy financier had been killed by his disease. No one would ever question it since it was public knowledge he had suffered from a terminal illness.

This time Upton howled so loud and so long several monk guards came to his door and shushed him. He roared into their faces, throwing himself this way and that around the cell his chains rattling like thunder.

Seeing they would not subdue him, the monks left again, just as if he were no threat. No one could hear him beyond the monastery enclave. No one would ever search for him. He had been outwitted and imprisoned.

Well! He would find a way to extract his revenge on both the old Predator vampires who had done this to him. If it took a thousand years, he would find satisfaction.

Mentor was alerted when Upton went crazy. He kept a very minor watch on the vampire, but even if he hadn't, the monks would have sent word. He knew Upton planned escape some way, some day. He'd have to watch him closer now.

It did not surprise him to discover Ross had taken over Upton's enterprises. He cared little about that, feeling Ross would always be pliable to some extent. He was no Upton.

Mentor sat in the backyard of Bette's house. Inside, she slept in the arms of her husband. Outside, the trees rustled and the moon went in and out of cloud cover.

Mentor's thoughts moved to Dell. He gently probed the fetus she carried, touching it with his consciousness. She would give birth to a dhampir, half vampire, half human, and the half-breed would grow to loathe his mother's clan. It would want to eradicate them from the Earth. She didn't yet know these things, not truly know them, but she would learn when it was too late.

But no matter, no matter, the world would go on. God might listen, or He might have gone on a vacation. Ross would continue being rambunctious and often deadly, his power growing as Upton's billions burgeoned. Bette would love Alan, and she would be loved in turn throughout all the days of her life. Upton would rage and plot, his heart growing ever darker.

Arid the world would continue to turn. That was all Mentor knew with any certainty.

He looked around once more at the peaceful Japanese garden before sailing above the Earth where he paused, looking down upon it. He then looked up, into the vast reaches of dark, endless, cold space where the universe twirled. None of them had ever tried to go farther out than where he was now. What if they tried? What if there was another habitable planet they could migrate to? But they would just die there, cut off from mankind.

He sighed and looked down again at the blue, swirling globe of his home, the prison where human and vampire were caught in a timeless struggle. If he must have solace, then this was it.

The world would go on, whatever happened to him and his kind. It cared little for the affairs of the creatures living upon it as it spun through space and time.