LEGIONS OF THE DARK (VAMPIRE NATIONS CHRONICLES) Read Online Free PDF Page A

speak, her eyes staring into Mentor's at her bedside, she wondered if she had the courage for this. How had little Eddie been able to accept it? How had her parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents? Why hadn't they all long since found a way to die rather than live this way?
    She could see Mentor sitting nearby, gazing at her. She tried to blink to let him know she was cognizant of him. Her eyelids came down halfway, then went up again.
    "I know you're there. I can hear your thoughts. I didn't ask permission, so I hope it's all right." She blinked just halfway again.
    How do I ever act human again? she asked him in her thoughts. How do any of you stand this?
    "We live because we must, Dell, and so will you. There's a place in the world for us or we wouldn't be here. You'll learn to be yourself again. Your human self. You'll learn it so well, you'll be a natural at it." He smiled at the play on the word they used for those who continued on as if human.
    Dell rolled her eyes back into her head and fiercely tried to sit up. She couldn't even lift her head from the pillow. She sent messages to her legs to try to make them rise and they ignored her, lying like dead, fallen trees on the bed.
    Oh, God, she would never learn how to walk again, to talk, to brush her hair, and to do her trig assignments. She would never learn to smile or laugh or . . . hope.
    "Oh, yes, you will," Mentor said. "It just takes time and faith. You're not someone who will give up. I know you aren't."
    She didn't know that herself. Mentor might know more than she, but she wanted very much to shout in his face that he was wrong, he was totally wrong. She could give up if she wanted to and this felt like a time to want to. The alternative—to learn to live again—seemed impossible.
     

3
     
     
     
     
    Charles Upton lay in his bed propped up on half a dozen pillows. His butler—a real one trained in London and transported to Houston, Texas by Upton's private jet—had left the room moments before to instruct the cook to prepare Charles his usual breakfast—a poached egg and dry toast. Butter—any kind of grease—nauseated him.
    On the bedside table rested a wood and ivory-inlaid tray filled with a stack of unopened mail. Charles looked at it with a wary eye, as if it contained bombs or poison glue on the envelope seals. He would rather not handle the mail. Not today. Not any day. He should talk to David about rerouting the mail from his penthouse atop Upton Towers to the offices below so that David could sort through it. Daily tasks had become too much trouble to deal with anymore.
    Anyhow, none of it was personal mail. His family had all deserted him when he'd gotten ill. They thought it was contagious or something, or they just couldn't stomach the sight of him. If he'd ever married and had children, maybe he would have someone at his side now who cared. But then he doubted it. Women always betrayed you and took the money and ran. Children failed all your expectations and took your money and ran, too. He realized he pretty much hated women and children.
    He glanced across the large silvery-gray carpeted bedroom, decorated in an ornate Louis-the-Fifteenth style, to the gilt mirror over a writing desk. If he were to make the effort to get out of bed and sit at the desk, he would see his terrible image staring back at him. Well, he'd make the effort, by God! He wasn't so crippled yet that he had to lie in his bed like a dying man.
    He threw back the covers and swung his legs to the floor. He carefully pushed up with both his arms, putting weight on his legs, and felt stronger right away. He walked to the mirror over the desk and stood there without any assistance, staring at his reflection.
    Maybe soon he'd have all mirrors taken from the penthouse. He wasn't sure he could stand to look at himself anymore.
    The disease struck when he was in his mid-forties. Now, at sixty-eight, it had progressed to where he could not go out in public without being