LEGIONS OF THE DARK (VAMPIRE NATIONS CHRONICLES) by Billie Sue Mosiman Read Free Book Online

a body that no longer functioned in any way. He'd be a prisoner in the flesh. They would come from the pub and find him, pronounce him dead, and bury him.
    He felt like shouting out his grief and horror at the snowy sky. He had to get out of the old, decayed body with the burst veins and the hemorrhaging system. He turned on his side to the young man who lay in the snow, his arms thrown out at his sides. The young man was already dying. Mentor reached over and slipped his old hand beneath the other man's thick wool coat. He slipped it beneath the rough shirt and to the man's chest. He felt for the heart. It beat erratically and the breathing was shallow.
    Mentor lay that way, his hand on the man's chest, waiting. He dosed his eyes and began to will himself away from his own dying form. The young man's veins were strong and they would carry blood, even after his spirit left the body. The young man would be a perfect vehicle.
    All Mentor had to do was wait for the moment of death for them both and find a way to make the switch.
    How? How was he to do it? Why had it come to this, what manner of supreme being would have devised such a terrible plot for his kind?
    He forced his whole being into an introspective trance where he seemed to pull and tug at his spirit that was attached so steadfastly to the old body. He did not know if it would work or how it worked. He only had faith that it would. He could not imagine lying in the dead old body in a casket for the rest of eternity, trapped by earth, brother to the darkness.
    Beneath his hand he felt the other man's heart cease, the breathing end. Now was the time.
    He tugged harder, blasting with all his might against the structure of the inner body, pushing against the still heart, the deflated lungs, willing with all his might and soul to be set free.
    The chaotic fury of his will sent out a message that reached a vampire older yet than Mentor. This being used the name Balatan, and he, too, had come to the mountains of Switzerland to hide away and live a quiet life for his own personal reasons. Mentor had known of him, but they'd never met, both preferring their self-enforced solitude. They frequented different villages, careful not to compete for territory.
    Within minutes, the Predator was at Mentor's side in the swirling snow. Mentor could no longer open his eyes or move his limbs. He sensed the being nearby and called to him frantically. What do I do? Save me!
    Balatan seemed to enter Mentor's destroyed body in order to help him release himself from the boundaries of the flesh. Mentor felt him like a shawl over the shoulders. His spirit was cold as an ice floe and dark as the bottom of a mine. He screamed at him, "Let go! Step into the void, and I will guide you to the other body!"
    Mentor did as he was told, insane with fear and the thought of the grave's entrapment. He pushed harder and harder, willing himself loose from the tendons, muscles, and flabby flesh, tearing himself from the dead meat that had been his body since the day he was born.
    He screamed mentally, crying out in horror and despair, beating against the material body with every ounce of his consciousness. Suddenly he found himself free, light as the air, and Balatan had hold of him, jerking him up and away from the snow. Once loose from the old man he had become, Mentor could see the body below him, and he almost rushed back to it, longing for the familiarity of that flesh and bone.
    Balatan shouted, "No!" and pushed him this time, sending his spirit flying down toward the young man's form on the snow.
    Mentor flung out his invisible self, making it as wide as a blanket, and it hit the dead young man's body like a wave crashing from high. He fell for what seemed like ages through darkness, and then he opened eyes on a new world.
    Balatan hovered over him in the air, dressed all in black wool. "Welcome to your new body."
    Mentor blinked. He moved one hand, crushing a fistful of snow, and feeling how cold it was.