Dark Changeling Part 17

However, in some situations it can be very useful."

"I'm impressed," Roger said. "I wish Sylvia had explained this to me."

"Worth the ordeal?" said Volnar with a hint of derision.

"For once, yes."

"Some gaps may remain. You can, of course, call me when you need further advice or clarification." Volnar took a business card from his pocket and jotted several numbers on it.

Accepting the card, Roger noticed that the seasick feeling had almost vanished. "I can imagine what the psychological community would make of that-exchange. Especially the researchers who are already interested in extrasensory powers." He thought of Britt, with a fleeting image of "initiating" her into a telepathic bond.If I think that's a good idea, I really am out of my mind. "Listen, Volnar, the age of superst.i.tion is long gone. Why don't you people declare yourselves to the scientific com-munity? Your species and the human race could share infor-mation that would benefit all of us."

"I'm astonished at your naivete." Volnar paced to the window, turned, folded his arms, and glared down at Roger. "Do you seriously believe the human authorities-no matter what a few scientists might recommend-would react well to a group of nearly immortal predators in their midst? How many ordinary people would relish the idea of donating their blood to sustain 'monsters'?"

"Surely it wouldn't have to be like that, not with proper preparation and-well, public relations work."

"Public relations experts can accomplish only so much against primal fears. Do you want to spend your life on a reservation? The American Indians haven't fared very well in that arrangement, have they?" When Roger tried to speak up, Volnar overrode him.

"More likely, we'd be locked in zoos, or worse, laboratories. Those who weren't exterminated on sight."

"I find that hard to imagine, not with the current att.i.tude toward endangered species. Many natural predators are admired nowadays-killer whales, Siberian tigers, timber wolves-"

"May enjoy the protection of what some people derisively call 'tree-huggers.' The whales, tigers, and wolves, if they could talk, would doubtless take a dim view of their situation nevertheless." "Is this why you objected to my reporting Sandor to the police?"

"Objected? Young man, no vampire in his senses would have considered doing what you did. If Sandor is caught and examined, or worse yet killed and dissected, the survival of our whole race would be jeopardized. That's far more important than the premature deaths of a few ephemerals."

"d.a.m.n it, Volnar, I can't accept that!" Roger leaped to his feet. "I will not dismiss human beings as-as game animals. I willnot be like you."

Volnar shut him up with a cold stare. "I mentioned that I was your mother's advisor. Therefore I was bonded with her and shared her death."

"Then why the h.e.l.l didn't you stop it?"

"Had I not been hundreds of miles away at the time, I would have." Volnar's mind locked onto Roger's....

Roger found himself in the cellar of a nineteenth-century stone house on the outskirts of a small French village. That fact seeped into his consciousness as background information, while in the foreground his thoughts were submerged in those of a wo-man lying on a wide bed covered with sheets of white linen, in a paneled room of that cellar. He shared the panicked racing of the woman's heart as the fog of sleep cleared from her eyes.

A man holding a kerosene lamp stood over her. "Wake up, Claudette! For G.o.d's sake, you must-" He spoke in French, which Roger understood without being fully aware of the translation process.

Claudette sprang up and grabbed the man's arm. As her nails dug into the skin, the man winced but did not pull away. "What is it, Raoul?"

Raoul's aura radiated barely suppressed terror, punctuated by the smell of fear on his damp flesh. "They're breaking in-they'll kill you."

Tossing her hair back from her face, Claudette released the man's arm and smoothed the rumpled robe she had slept in. "It's you I'm afraid for, my love. Our kind take a lot of killing." A sullen mutter, swelling to a low roar, a.s.saulted her ears from the floor above. "If you stay here while I confront them, they may not find you."

"Don't be absurd!" Anger flared up in Raoul, blotting out his fear.

The vision blurred, then re-formed in a parlor overstuffed with an eclectic mix of furniture and knickknacks from the Empire period on, which Claudette's eyes darted over unseeing, as familiar background details. Men brandishing a variety of weapons-some makeshift, such as hatchets, some on the level of the World War I cavalry sword an old man in a corner held in anen garde posture-cl.u.s.tered around Claudette and Raoul. A boy who looked barely twenty trained a shotgun on the woman. Claudette felt suffocated by the stink of terror and hate.

Her husband flung himself upon the boy with the gun. "Raoul, no!" Claudette shrieked. The blast ripped through Raoul's chest. The pain seared Claudette's flesh as well. An instant later it ceased, chopped off with the cutting of the link that bound her to her mate.

She saw, rather than felt, the ax blade that severed Raoul's head.

She fell off a precipice into a black abyss, into an unnatural darkness her night vision could not pierce. Only the scent of her lover's blood, already cooling in death, wrenched her back to the crowded room. A dozen hands closed on her flailing limbs. She fought with all her inhuman strength, her teeth and claws gouging any flesh that came within reach. The taste of blood scorched her mouth.

She howled like a rabid wolf, heedless of revealing her inhumanity.

But no matter how many she felled, they kept coming. At last she lay flat on her back, each arm and leg pinned by three or four a.s.sailants. The old man with the sword thrust a crucifix into her face. Baring her teeth, she snarled at him. A muscular fellow loomed over her. Almost before her eyes focused on it, the stake plunged between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.She felt every centimeter of the agony that tore through skin and cartilage to puncture her heart. And still she remained conscious, keening her anguish, to watch the sword sweep down. Its edge, dulled by time, lacerated her neck but did not bisect the spine. She felt the killers' horror when her eyes continued to stare up at them, and tortured ululations gurgled in her throat. She smelled smoke just before a hatchet extinguished awareness with her life....

Roger struggled back to the present as if swimming against twenty-foot surf. Volnar's mind still lay wide open to him. A rush of agony, centuries, millennia of it, washed over him before Volnar slammed the gates shut.

Tears burned Roger's eyes. He refused to let them fall. "d.a.m.n you," he whispered. A sharp pain in his chest gradually faded. He realized he had collapsed on the bed. He carefully sat up, becoming aware that the subjective drama had taken only a few seconds of objective time. He returned Volnar's stony gaze. "Have you no compa.s.sion?"

"A human virtue" answered Volnar. "One they seldom practice." Aloud he said, "I had to convince you of that, and time is too short for subtlety. Are we agreed that the millennial dawn of interspecies cooperation is not at hand? Good-I trust you won't commit any further indiscretions like betraying one of our kind to human 'justice'?"

Roger subdued his anger and spoke coldly. "Are you saying that Sandor should be left free to slaughter innocent people?"

With an impatient wave of his hand, Volnar said, "The matter of 'innocence' is irrelevant. My point is that allowing Neil to be captured would expose our entire race to carnage that would reduce the depredations of one outlaw to insignificance."

"So all you're going to do about it is look for his sister and hope she knows where he is? Not to mention whether he'll even listen to her. You're the Prime Elder; you're supposed to be practically omniscient. Don't you have any way of tracking a single 'outlaw'?"

Volnar said, "Ordinarily his advisor could. However, his case is anomalous. At the onset of p.u.b.erty he refused to bond with the woman chosen for his advisor, as he should have. According to her, Neil acquired his psychic gifts abnormally late, almost seventeen. Then they flooded upon him in full strength, subst.i.tuting a fresh terror for his fear that he would never develop into adulthood. He ran away from his advisor and tried to teach himself. She's washed her hands of both Neil and his sister."

Roger felt a twinge of unwilling sympathy for the s.a.d.i.s.tic killer. "I can imagine how difficult that must have been."

"From what I've heard about Neil, I suspect his perception has remained duller than normal. If he needs violent emotion to get the nourishment the rest of us absorb from more subtle stimuli, that would account for his obsession with pain and horror."

"Very well, he has problems," Roger said. What a challenge Sandor would pose for a psychoa.n.a.lyst! "That makes him more dangerous, not less. But as long as he doesn't expose your secret to the world, the people he kills mean nothing to you." He tried to stand up, making his head reel all over again.

"You're in no condition to drive." Volnar gathered brief-case, suitcases, and other personal property as he talked. "You need to rest and a.s.similate what I've poured into you. I'm checking out now and going to the airport. I'll turn in the key, but the room won't be disturbed until the maid shows up tomorrow morning. You stay here until you feel less agitated."

Though he hated to accept a favor from Volnar after being a.s.saulted with the memory of Claudette's murder, Roger had to agree.

He doubted he could walk to his car without staggering, much less drive.

"And keep me informed," Volnar said as he paused at the door, luggage in hand. "No matter what you think of me personally, that is what an advisor is for."

He stepped out. Roger heard the door latch click shut. A wave of exhaustion swamped him. He wanted nothing more than to sink into oblivion. For the first time in months, he felt tired enough to sleep during the night. At the last minute he remem-bered to set his wrist.w.a.tch alarm for five a.m. Despite his confusion and anger, a pleasant thought struck him. Once he gave Sylvia the profuse apology he owed her, they would be able to talk. Now that he knew the truth, they had so much to discuss. He fell asleep with a vision of the two of them hunting and feasting together in the woods behind his home.

* * * *ELECTRICITY SIZZLED along Sylvia's nerves. In the post-midnight darkness under the trees behind Roger's townhouse complex, she paced back and forth, rubbing her arms. Despite the dryness in her throat, she knew it wasn't blood she needed. That wouldn't quench the fire at her core.

Why wasn't Roger home when she needed him? If she didn't get in contact with him in time, whom else could she turn to?Why did I have to be so stubborn? If she'd gone to Nevada as soon as the symptoms began, her advisor or the Prime Elder would have arranged a mate for her in plenty of time. Instead, she'd counted on the chance of catching Roger off guard.Stupid! If s.e.xual desire did this to human beings, no wonder they be-haved so irrationally! Imagine spending one's whole life in the throes of this agony!

No, human s.e.xuality couldn't be like this. From touching the minds of her donors, Sylvia knew their pa.s.sion reached an unbearable peak only in the last few minutes before climax. It didn't maintain this intensity hour after hour. She shivered as her erect nipples brushed against the fabric of her blouse. She wanted to strip off her scratchy, binding clothes and run naked through the woods.

I may have to take an ordinary man. And they're so limited!

Swift footsteps broke the cycle of her thoughts. She whirled to face the sound. She caught her breath at the sight of the man threading his way among the trees.

"Good evening, Sylvia-or morning, I guess. Don't tell me you were planning to give yourself to the halfbreed?"

She hated the way her heart raced at the sound of his voice. "What are you talking about, Neil?"

"Your friend, the doctor. It took me a while to find out, but a few of our people still talk to me. The ones who know h.o.m.o saps are just food. The ones who gag at the thought of mating with them." He glided closer to her. She felt a rush of warmth between her legs. "You didn't know the doc's father was human?"

For an instant Sylvia forgot her discomfort. "No, I didn't, and neither did he. That explains a lot."

Suddenly Neil's arms wrapped around her. His heartbeat and breathing thundered in her ears. "Well, now that you do, you wouldn't want to waste yourself on him, even if he were here. Isn't it a good thing I just happened to show up?"

"Do you expect me to believe that?" She squirmed feebly, helpless against the a.s.sault of his strength and her l.u.s.t, and felt the pressure of his erection. "What are you doing here?" A spasm of arousal, deep inside, fought against her contempt for him.

"Followed you from the motel. I wanted to talk to you anyway-and now it's more than talk." He moved one hand upward to grasp her by the hair. "I've had enough of you hanging around with the halfbreed. Whose side are you on?"

"No side-I'm neutral," she gasped. "All I want is to be left alone. I was planning to move on soon anyway."

He grinned, the rotten-meat odor of his breath hitting her in the face. She wondered whether he slept in an abandoned building or even on the ground under a layer of brush; he didn't seem to have paid any attention to personal hygiene for a long time. "Think I'd let you get away with that, little one? Neutral, h.e.l.l! If you're not on my side, we're enemies. Now I know you didn't turn me in-but how can I trust you not to help the doc against me, if you don't give me some sign?"

"What?" she breathed. Much as she loathed the man, she caught herself wiggling against him, aching for closer contact.

"Easy. Remember what fun we had hunting together, before you got squeamish? You join me again. And we'll start with a private celebration." His other hand kneaded her b.u.t.tocks. Her rebellious flesh responded with another gush of hot liquid.

"No." She could manage no more than a feeble whisper.

"Everything but your mouth says yes. And if you have a baby-sure, I know it's almost unheard-of, the first time, but if-we can be untraditional and bring it up our own way."

What a grotesque idea, Sylvia thought. Imagine a baby trained in Neil's way of life-just the revenge against the elders his warped mind would hatch.

Neil's fiery eyes taunted her as he gripped her head, his fin-gers tangled in her hair, and tore her bermuda shorts down the front.

Sylvia's struggles did no more than entertain him. Though male and female vampires differed less in size and strength than human men and women, Neil was unusually large for his species, as well as older than Sylvia. Deep within, also, she knew she wasn't fighting him with her full strength.

He shoved her onto her back, hard. She scarcely noticed the shock of hitting the ground. Through her blouse his nails raked her shoulders and b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She felt his beard rasping her cheek, then his teeth sc.r.a.ping her collarbone. She let out a choked cry. He unzipped his pants. The feel of his hard shaft against her belly made her skin ripple, inside and out. She clawed at him, scenting the pungent odor of his blood, yet her legs involuntarily opened to his thrust.

"Are you going to scream? Be my guest."

She didn't. The townhouse complex was too close, and the taboo against drawing human attention was too deeply ingrained. She would endure Neil's violation-stop lying to yourself, girl, you'll enjoy it!- until he exhausted his l.u.s.t and left her alone.And if I do get pregnant, by some impossible fluke, I'll kill it!

But she did sob tearlessly under her breath when he pounded into her-sobbed with shame at the ecstatic convulsions that racked her body.

Six mutual o.r.g.a.s.ms later, the sobs escalated to shrieks when his teeth ripped into her throat.

A WHITE SQUARE on the foyer carpet caught Roger's eye. What remained of his well-fed contentment wilted like a p.r.i.c.ked balloon.

He focused his infrared-sensitive vision on the piece of paper. No heat traces, so the message had been delivered at least fifteen minutes ago. He knelt to pick up the note. A whiff of the metallic odor he a.s.sociated with vampires drifted to his nose. Sylvia? No, he would recognize her scent. As hesitantly as a child creeping alone into a dark room, he unfolded the paper.

Welcome home, Darvell. I left something for you in the woods behind your building, unless somebody else has removed it by now. Go about a hundred yards due north.

- N. S.

DEAR G.o.d, not another body!Crumpling the note and shoving it into a pocket, Roger dashed to the back door, unfastened chain and bolt with shaking hands, and raced into the woods. By now the drizzle had grown to a light but steady rain. Once he got a few yards under the trees, he didn't need Sandor's directions. The smell of death overwhelmed the fragrance of sap and pine needles.

Roger slowed to a brisk walk. He did not want to see this. He knew, though, that he had to check out the site before the police examined it. The murderer might have left evidence that implicated Roger.

No patch of heat served as a beacon to guide him, but the white of her face and the red smears from neck to groin snared his vision. All warmth had long since seeped out of her flesh.

Roger fell to his knees a couple of feet from the corpse.Sylvia! His head buzzed as if from a concussion. Still mercifully numb, he leaned closer, careful not to touch the blood-soaked leaves around the body. Her blouse and shorts had been ripped to shreds, as had the skin beneath. She lay on her back with arms and legs splayed wide apart. Something was wrong with the angle of her neck.

Good G.o.d, he'd torn off her head!So she can't regenerate.Roger's numbness yielded to nausea. He turned and staggered through the underbrush, managing to get well away from the murder site before vomiting. Long after his stomach emptied itself, he crouched on all fours, retching up his anguish. Eventually the dry heaves gave way to sobs. Vampires, Sylvia had once told him, didn't cry tears. Roger hadn't inherited that limitation. Tears scorched his eyes and cheeks, choking him until he almost got sick all over again.

Exhausted at last, feeling as if he'd ejected every drop of fluid in his body, he scooped pine straw over the mess on the ground.

Even now, he had the presence of mind to realize he mustn't leave evidence. He trotted unsteadily back home.

The first thing he did was to tear the note from Sandor into tiny sc.r.a.ps and rinse them down the garbage disposal. Next he sat down in the living room to think.

Clearly Sandor intended Sylvia's death as a warning. He was closing in, destroying a person important to Roger, as well as sending the signal that he had no compunctions about killing one of his own race. Roger knew he had to report the murder. Waiting for it to be discovered by someone else could lead to awkward questions.

Another problem came to mind-an autopsy on Sylvia might provide data that could endanger the vampire community. How much did vampires differ, on the gross anatomical level, fromh.o.m.o sapiens ? It couldn't be helped; he had no reliable way of concealing the body.Anyhow, I owe the vampire community d.a.m.n near zero!

He went into his office and dialed Lieutenant Hayes' home number.

"Dr. Darvell? Surprised to hear from you. Something wrong?" said the detective's sleep-thickened voice.

"Yes." Roger paused to force his breathing under control. "I was away from home overnight, visiting with a friend from out of town.

When I got back, I went for a walk in the woods, as I often do." His neighbors would confirm that habit, if any suspicion arose.

"In the rain?"

"A little rain doesn't bother me-it's refreshing." He swallowed hard. "It seems a-another friend of mine who's been staying in the area for a few weeks stopped by while I was gone. I found her-back there-" To his shame, he couldn't finish the sentence.

Hayes' drowsy voice shifted gears to professional crispness. "I'll be right over."

Chapter 13

ROGER ENDURED an agonizing Friday at the office, avoiding Britt for fear she would notice his distress and comment on it. On top of the shock of Sylvia's murder, stray fragments of data from Volnar's "download" floated into his consciousness like bubbles rising to the surface of a pond. He returned home that night to the head-splitting jangle of the telephone.