LEGIONS OF THE DARK (VAMPIRE NATIONS CHRONICLES) (16 page)

Now, when Dell went to visit her cousin, she knew VeryPretty would shy from her and hide beneath Carolyn's bed. It made her sad to think about it.

But she had not wanted a house pet like a cat or dog. She had always wanted her very own horse. It might be spooked by her, sensing she wasn't human, but she knew she could reach it with her mind, make it comfortable with her.

One of Cheyenne's cousins had kept a horse where she lived on a ranch outside of Dallas. Dell had been visiting the cousin with Cheyenne one day and fell instantly in love. The horse at first shied from her, but after snuffling through its massive nose and prancing away from her twice when she neared it, she spoke to it softly until it steadied. He finally let her rub his nose. She had asked to ride it and Cheyenne's cousin said sure, why not? She hadn't taken the horse faster than a trot, afraid she'd fall off, but once out of the range of her friends' hearing, she had whispered to the horse how majestic he was and how wonderful it was to ride him.

She had been ten years old. The horse was just an old gelding that kids had been riding for years. At home, she had pestered her parents about it. "Why can't I have one?" she'd asked. She'd been told how expensive it was to buy a horse, not to mention its upkeep. They would have to board it at a stable, pay for its food and vet bills, and at that time they simply could not afford it. Everything they could earn went toward living expenses and the cost of the blood the Predators sold.

Crushed, Dell had stopped begging. Her parents really did work very hard. But she'd never stopped hoping to one day own a horse of her own. Now they were driving out of the city and all around them were ranches and farms fenced off from the road with barbed wire and hollow steel rails.

"It's a horse!" she cried, unable to keep quiet. She just had to know. "You've bought me a horse, haven't you?"

Her mother turned from the front seat, smiling. "We thought it would be good for you."

"Oh, Mama, thank you, thank you! Thank you, Daddy!"

"Now don't get too excited," her father said. "It's not much of a horse. We knew it would cost a great deal to keep it boarded, so we had to buy an older one than we would have liked."

She didn't care. She didn't care if it was old as Methuselah, at least she could ride it. She could love it. She could have something of her own.

At the stables where her father turned in, Dell eyed all the horses wandering in the paddocks and standing by the stalls. When the car stopped, she was the first one out of the door. She hurried to a man leading a horse by a halter. "Is that my horse?" she asked, breathless.

"And who might you be?" the stable attendant asked in a friendly way.

"Dell! Della Cambian. You have my horse here?"

"Well, shoot, little girl, I think we just might have it back there in one of those stalls." The man grinned, and a gold crown shone from an upper incisor.

Dell turned to the stalls and saw several horses still closed in there. "Which one?"

Her father was at her side then and said, pointing. "That one."

It was at the far end in the last stall. He had his head hanging over the gate and Dell saw that he was a roan with a white spot right between the center of his eyes.

"Oh!" That's all she could say. To her it was the most beautiful animal in the world. Her father had said the horse was old, and that made him cheaper, but to her the horse was ageless and grand. She ran all the way to the stall, coming to an abrupt standstill just before the horse so as not to spook it.

"Hey," she called softly. "It's me, Dell. Want to go for a ride?" She telepathically talked to the horse in a soothing monotone that she knew he could hear inside his mind. She was so afraid he would fear her. If he feared her, she would never be able to keep him.

Good horse, nice horse, she thought. I love you, do you know that? I do love you already.

She felt ten years old again once the horse was saddled for her and she had climbed aboard. His name, the stable hand said, was Lightning. "Not like he's fast anymore," the man added. "He's a little long in the tooth for racing."

Dell waved to her beaming parents and to her brother, who looked like he would split open with joy. She turned the horse with the reins and locked her legs around him. He started walking slowly, and that was all right with her. She was communicating with him silently, knowing he could read her thoughts. Good horse, she thought again. What a fine horse you are. We will be friends, we will be pals forever.

He took her across a field and to a riding path. He didn't move fast, never went into a trot, but Dell felt she was kissing the wind on the back of a giant, valiant steed. She was free! They were one, she and the horse, moving under the dappled shade of the path, all alone.

She forgot that she was unnatural trying to live a natural life. She was not a vampire who depended on blood to live, but just a girl riding gently through a forest on the back of her very own horse, Lightning.

Time stopped and she had no idea how long she'd been riding when finally the horse, knowing where he was to go, returned to the stalls. Her parents sat at a concrete picnic table in the shade of the stalls, while her brother stood trying to pet a goat tied to a stake. The goat was bucking to free himself, whinnying at Eddie's strange scent.

Dell rode up, pulling at the reins and calling, "Whoa," to Lightning. She dismounted, her legs shaky, the reins in her hand. "This is the best surprise I've ever had," she said.

Her father came over and when Lightning shied from him, jerking his head back, waited for the horse to calm down. "He's twenty years old," he said. "He was owned by a family whose children all rode him, but now they're all grown and didn't want him anymore. I thought since you always wanted a pet, he'd be just right for you."

Dell kissed her father's cheek. "I love him," she said. "He's wonderful."

"Well, you're going to have to come out here and take care of him. He needs grooming and needs riding to get his exercise."

"Don't worry! I'll come see him all the time. I can get a job this summer and help with the costs."

Her father waved that off. "It's not so expensive. I think I can afford it."

On the way home Dell couldn't stop chattering. She was going to braid his mane. She was going to brush him and get to know him and together they'd wander all over the riding paths at the stables. One day, she'd get her own place where she'd have a stable built, and put him where she could see him every day. How long did horses live anyway? Wouldn't Lightning live for a long time yet?

Despite hearing most horses didn't live as long as thirty years, she thought she'd never been so happy before. She knew her parents had done this to help her adjust into her new life. They knew she needed something of her own to love and cherish, something she could talk to that would never betray her secrets. They were the best parents in the world, she thought, the best there ever were.

That night in her bed she relived her joy in how the horse had been comfortable with her despite what she was. She remembered the excitement of riding Lightning and recalled how time had stopped, dropping her into a timeless world where there were no worries or problems. As the horse walked, she had grown accustomed to his pace and let her body go loose so that finally she hardly bounced in the saddle, but rode Lightning's back as if she were a part of him.

She thought she could probably sneak out of the house and go to Lightning without using a car at all. But she didn't know how to do that yet, how some of them could transform into something else that vanished and reappeared elsewhere. But when she did know how, when she did learn how to vanish and reach her horse without the benefit of human transportation, she could visit him at night when no one was around. She'd make him her best friend of all, her confidant, her closest ally in a world where she was an aberration, an abomination, a . . . dead girl.

He already knew in some way that she was not like others who rode him. Yet he'd accepted her strangeness once she'd spoken to him telepathically, and he had taken her willingly down the riding path just as if she were still human, still just a young woman out for a trail ride.

She fell into a deep sleep while happiness flooded her and burned away all her questions and fears. She would never forget this kindness of her parents and never take for granted whatever sacrifices they were making in order to give her what she'd always wanted.

She might be vampire, she might not be permitted to live as a mortal being, but as long as she had Lightning, she thought she could find a way to cope. Only once did the thought occur to her that because the horse was already twenty, he might live only another ten years or even less and then she would lose him. She banished the thought immediately, not wishing to let reality intrude on her bliss. Deep down, she knew there were going to be a great many losses over the years to come. Not just beloved horses, but friends and relatives who had never contracted the disease. One day she'd lose Aunt Celia. And Carolyn. Like all humankind, she would have to bear those losses and go on, somehow. That there would be more of them than any human ever faced wasn't something she could think about right now.

Bette Kinyo lived alone in a small house she'd purchased in an ethnically-mixed neighborhood. It was inexpensive and at the time, ten years before, she had not been making as much as she did these days. Nevertheless, she hadn't moved, even though she could have afforded a nicer place. She'd never felt an urge to abandon either the neighborhood or the home she'd made in the little house. In the privacy-fenced backyard, she had a Japanese garden that had taken her two years to construct. It was ringed with small conifers and miniature viburnums and holly. In the center of the greenery was her masterpiece, a raked bed of white pea gravel that she tended once a week, changing the rake marks and praying small prayers for a continued peaceful existence as she worked.

Inside the house she had stripped and refinished the stair rails and spindles that led to a loft bedroom she'd decorated in Victorian style with bouquets of roses from her gardens and flowered chintz easy chairs facing a slanted rooftop window overlooking the Japanese garden. She took tea there in the late evening just before sunset, after a spare dinner. In her living room light glowed like gold, reflected from Tiffany-style lamps, and bookcases overflowed with well-worn volumes of history and poetry.

Her kitchen was left as she found it, not even a dishwasher installed to modernize it. There were open cabinets displaying a collection of Japanese Nippon dishware and on the wall she'd hung handwoven baskets she bought from local Mexican artisans.

She knew the house and every crevice and corner in it. It was her sanctuary and the most beloved possession she owned. So when the intruder appeared, she knew it even before he spoke.

She had her back to the room, her hands deep in sudsy water washing the dinner dishes. She stiffened and turned her head to look behind her. "Who are you?" she asked in a strong voice. She did not ask how he had got into her home through the locked doors. She knew immediately that he was not human and was in fact something obscene and unnatural. She had felt it the moment she knew he was there, standing behind her on the oval hooked rug in the center of her kitchen.

Unlike Westerners, she had no prejudice against the idea of the supernatural. Though she had attended American universities and was a scientist, she saw no reason to discard the centuries of wisdom that had come down through her family from their ancestors in Japan. The man who had appeared out of thin air in her kitchen might be a spirit of the house only now making itself known to her. Her little home had been built in the late 1800s, and she had wondered if any of the people who had lived in it before would want to communicate with her. But for ten years they had remained silent. Until now.

She nodded. "Yes, of course I know." She gave him a scornful look as she put the dish towel aside on the counter. She took two steps closer to him, wondering about him. "You're not quite real," she said. "I know that much."

He smiled, and she stiffened again, but this time with mounting fear. There was something wrong with the smile, something wrong with the shape of his teeth . . . his eyeteeth. She sucked in air slowly and now she knew a greater fear that crept up her spine and insinuated itself into the lizard part of her brain.

"I'm sorry to disappoint you. I am not a ghost. I am as solid as you. As real as you. Would you like to touch me and see for yourself?"

She shook her head quickly. She waited for him to go on. What could this thing want with her? If it had not come from the many memories imprinted on the floors and walls and ceilings of her house, then where had it originated?

It was after sunset, and the bright overhead light in her kitchen made him appear to be as solid as any man, just as he'd claimed. If it had not been for the glimpse of his teeth when he'd smiled at her, she knew she would not feel this uncommon fear rising as a tide inside her mind. She fought back the edge of panic and glanced about for something she might use against him to protect herself. The small iron skillet on the stove burner? The heavy glass teapot on the counter? She doubted she would ever get the drawer open so she could reach for a sharp knife.