SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy

Read SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy for Free Online Page A

Book: Read SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy for Free Online
Authors: Billie Sue Mosiman
of the silver had contorted his face even more. Oh, he was a monster, a monster in his body and mind, and some days he did not want to be reminded of it. Some days that knowledge was enough to send rage pumping through his heart like a shot of adrenaline.
    He balanced the tray on his knees and clenched one fist. He raised it and began to pound the bed. Slowly, carefully, so as not to tip over the tray, methodically and relentlessly he hit the bed again and again and again.
     

Chapter 4
     
     
     
     
    In time, Mentor would explain to Dell that the disease itself was responsible for the presence of vampires upon the Earth, but that the choice of what kind of vampire one became was spiritual. Supernatural. The disease that took human cells and caused them to mutate into those of a vampire had nothing to do with the nature of the being who was finally created. He had once tried telling this secret to a young person before he entered the dream, before he died, but it caused such horror and revulsion, Mentor decided it was best to let the dying patient learn all that he must within the confines of the change itself. Warning or explaining did not seem to do the good he had hoped it would. He realized finally that one cannot explain away the supernatural, cannot warn about the dangers of the spirit.
    Over the years Mentor had studied the writings of scientists and biologists hoping to understand how the body could be overtaken and killed, yet made to live again as something altogether new. All other diseases ravaged the body, consuming and defeating it until the soul fled from it forever. In contrast, the mutated disease of porphyria deformed the body and took it to the brink of death, but at the last moment the cells revived, becoming new cells that were neither human nor animal. However, the human soul was left to struggle on, the mind remaining, the memories intact. And on that brink of death was where the soul determined what path it would follow. Closed off from heaven and blocked from the gates of hell, the soul had but three choices. It could embrace evil fully and become a Predator vampire, seeking to take down humans in order to survive. It could fall back to the weakest link of vampiric existence and hide from man as a Craven. Or it could muster the strength to live on in human society, learning to hide away its supernatural powers in order to go forward into history as if truly human still.
    This last path was the hardest. A Predator lived by night, slept by day, and had no use for a conscience. A Craven merely passed as a diseased human, handicapped by sunlight, sick all the time, lost forever in the despair of loneliness behind drawn shades, dependent on the charity of Predators to supply them with life-sustaining blood. But a Natural! He chose to walk in the day, converse and interact with humans as one of them, keeping secret the stillness of his heart and the cruelty of immortality. Naturals worked hard to earn enough money not only to live as humans lived, but to pay the Predators for the blood they needed. They were not killers like the Predators. They hoped never to take life.
    Dell's parents worked very hard, harder perhaps than most humans. Her mother was a payroll accountant at a car dealership in Dallas. She often worked Saturdays, needing the overtime pay. Dell's father was a software engineer, fighting for pay grade updates, and cost of living allowances. Everyone in Dell's family worked long hours, some of them working two jobs, and never complaining about it for they wanted, most of all, to live in the world naturally.
    At various times some of the Naturals thought about setting up their own blood banks, cutting the Predators out of the loop, but the supply chain had been set up this way from the beginning and the Predators were not eager to give up the power and profit they enjoyed. Rather than go to war with them to win control of the blood banks, the Naturals bowed to tradition and continued buying

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