Cameo and the Vampire (4 page)

He hesitated. "I've seen men become slaves to this."

"I know," she said, resigned to this knowledge. "What else do you have right now? You need relief."

"All right." He swallowed down a gulp, smaller than a shot, but she poured more into his mouth. "Enough," he managed, pulling away from her.

"A doctor should be by soon."

He nodded. "How is the Azez?"

"Still frozen."

"And Jules?"

She lowered her eyes and spied the bloody razor lying on the dusty floor. "What? Oh, him?" Cameo knelt down and lifted the razor to her thigh, then walked behind Opal shielding it from him. "He said Haffef had ordered him to follow me."

"Here?"

She examined the smear on the shining blade for a moment—it was beautifully red, a mixture of blood and suds— and then she licked off the blood, lather, dust, and all. Her mouth felt suddenly energized. A buzzing sensation overtook her, and she saw the shadow-man she'd left with Opal, but as she looked at him, she could make out the features of a face. A dull, expressionless face.

Cameo covered her mouth with one hand, frightened, and slammed the straight razor back onto the table. "Everywhere ...." she hissed.

Opal craned his neck around, "Did you hurt yourself?"

"Uhh ... no." She could not pull her attention from the newly discovered face of the shade. She felt the energy subsiding, and the face slid until the shadow was once more just an opaque shadow. No more human face.

Cameo hastily wiped her mouth with the palm of her hand and turned toward the dandy sitting in the chair before her.

Opal had slumped down a bit in the chair and was in a more restful position. "What does that mean?" he said slowly, yawning. "Everywhere?"

"Well, I believe it means that I'm never going anywhere again without Jules spying on me. Haffef will always know where I am, what I'm doing, and who I'm doing it with."

He sighed, "I really wish I hadn't stabbed him."

She glanced down at him, doped up on a tincture, helpless, in a whorehouse chair. "Yeah, me too."

There was a quick rap at their door.

Opal righted himself.

Cameo's expression shifted to one that was serious. She pulled her dagger and moved toward the door. "Who is it?"

"My name is Gunther Kingaby. I'm a doctor.... Winnie, the apothecary, sent me."

Cameo opened the door a crack. A young man was standing at the door, and behind him was one of the girls who had been playing cards with Opal. "You," she motioned to the woman, "leave."

"I was just helping him find his way to Mister Black's room."

Cameo stared at her. She couldn't be too careful; the woman was standing directly behind the doctor, and she might have a weapon in her hand.

Perturbed, the woman scurried away.

The assassin opened up the door for Gunther. "Come in."

Mister Kingaby glanced at Cameo anxiously as he moved past her, a pack slung over one shoulder.

"Well, hello Doctor," Opal greeted him brightly.

Gunther took in the form of this new individual: a rangy middle-aged man, broken and scarred, sitting in a chair before him. "This must be the patient."

"That's right," Cameo uttered, closing the door.

"Do you think you can fix this ... predicament I seem to be in?" Although he had come to the conclusion that he would be living out the rest of his life as an invalid, Opal's tone was tinged with hope. He could, after all, have overlooked some possibility for medical healing that he, only a revolutionary, may not have known about.

The doctor pulled out something that looked like a splint from his shoulder-pack.

Opal sighed.
No, no hope at all for some miracle, medical cure.

Then he pulled forth a phial of reddish-brown liquid.

"A tincture," the dandy said. "Ah, yes. I believe we have that."

Cameo took it from the man's fingers. "That's fine. We may run out." And then she met Gunther's dark eyes, "He doesn't want to take it."

He did his best impression of complete understanding, but in actuality he wanted to leave as soon as possible. Peg, the wench who had walked him upstairs, had mentioned that she believed the woman in black was actually Cameo, an assassin who had been with the Association for years. Now that he had seen her, he had to agree that she resembled the wanted posters, and the whitish orbs she had for eyes coincided with the ghost stories he'd been told when he was a lad—a little too well, actually, for him, a man of enlightened thinking.

"Well," he said to Opal, "your hands are broken."

"Really?"

"Yes," he said, ignoring the sarcasm in the rather rangy man's tone. "And I believe putting them in splints is really the only solution. You may want to take the painkiller before I begin."

"How bad is it going to be?"

"You need the tincture."

He motioned for Cameo to give him more.

"Will this heal his broken bones?"

He took a deep breath, "Yes, but I can tell you right now that with the severity of the breaks in his hands and fingers, they will never work the same again." He turned to speak directly to Opal, "What happened to you?"

"No questions." Cameo said, replacing the flask.

"All right," he said, lifting Opal's arm and pushing back his sleeve to fit a splint on the underside of his arm. "You will probably regain some motion in your hands once they get the opportunity to heal."

The dandy gritted his teeth. Simply having his fingers manipulated was agony, somewhat deadened now with the painkiller, but nonetheless an unpleasant experience.

* * * * *

"Read me some of Bel's poetry."

She turned to look in Opal's direction. He hadn't said a thing in hours, and Cameo had assumed he was asleep, so she hadn't bothered to light any candles, and now his upper body was in shadow.

"What was that?" She set down the deck of cards she'd been toying with. "I didn't think you regarded Bel's poetry with much esteem."

He chuckled a bit. "No, I don't ... but I was thinking about him."

She remembered the night Bel had been killed by Haffef. The odd, sickening sound that his back made as the vampire snapped it, a deep sound. "All right," she stood, "but first I think I'll need another bottle of wine."

"You need a bottle of wine to get through it?"

She smiled as she exited the room, "Just to soothe my parched throat. I'll be right back."

As she wound her way down the narrow hallway, she crossed the path of the redhead, who was standing in her doorway and retreated into shadow the moment that she saw Cameo pass by. Thinking nothing of it, Cameo bounded down the steps and up to the bar, which was bustling with activity.

"Bottle of wine," she muttered to the barkeep, who was quick to get to her. As she waited, she glanced down the length of the bar at the people gathered there, an eclectic group of gentlemen and sailors ... and then the one nearest her, clad in black: Jules.

He lifted his face to acknowledge her standing there. He seemed tired, and unimpressed, and world-weary.

"Lady," the barkeep set the bottle down in front of her.

"Hmm?" was all she said, then she saw the wine and dropped some coin on the notched surface and walked away, mounting the stairs to the room she shared with Opal.

Jules watched her go.

"That's Cameo," someone behind him said. "She's wanted for murder."

"Part of the Association."

He rested his head on his fist, covering the scar burned into his cheek.

* * * * *

"Jules is downstairs," she announced as she reentered the room.

"What?" Opal was groggy.

Cameo worked at the cork for a moment before it popped out of the bottle. "He's here, at Hattie's, sitting at the bar."

The dandy didn't respond, or move; for a moment she thought he'd dozed off again, so she sat back down at the edge of the bed and took a sip directly from the bottle.

"Maybe he's just here to keep an eye on you."

"Maybe." She knelt down to rummage through the papers in a pile on the floor until she found Bellamy's poems.

"You think he's here to kill me?" he asked quietly.

"He's probably here to keep an eye on me and to kill you if possible."

"Probably."

"You don't seem to distressed about it, regardless."

"No."

She set the paperwork on the bed and moved to light the candles in the room. As the flame came to life, she got a better look at his expression, which was extremely calm, perhaps melancholy. That would explain the longing to hear Bel's voice again. "All of this sitting in the dark is enough to put anyone in a sour mood," she uttered. "I used to do it all the time in Edel's" her voice broke a little, "apartment."

His eye rediscovered the curve of her lips in the flickering light. She really was once so striking, but now her face was so marred with the scars Edel had left her with, and her eyes were dead eyes. It seemed to him that she was detached from life.

"Well," she lifted the book. "Here's one:

'Round and 'round

the maypole

delusions of my past

shades

and mirrored memories

silhouettes and shadows

cast

'Round and 'round

the maypole

the journey never ends

twist and turn

a fable

another face 'round another bend.
"

Opal laughed out loud. "It's so bad."

She held a hand to her mouth. "Ah, good old Bel. No wonder he never wanted to share any of it with me."

"Consider yourself blessed. I was subjected to that every night when, uh, we first met."

"Hmm ..." she said, turning the page.

"Yes, he wanted critiques. It was late, and I wanted to go to sleep. What he really wanted was me to tell him how fantastic every word was," he chuckled. "Ah ... those were good times."

"Do you want something to drink?"

Opal glanced down at the large splints that ran from his forearms up to the tips of his fingers and sort of caged his hands in a box, to keep them safe and unmoving. "Yes, please."

She poured it into a ceramic cup that one of the girl's had left in the room. She wanted him to feel normal. Opal would have his own cup and she would drink from the bottle, as if he were able to hold the vessel himself. And then, she tipped the cup up to his lips for him to drink.

He smiled at her. "Our whole lives are ahead of us now. Where are we going to go?"

She smirked, "Now that your whole life is ahead of us, I think we should consider finding Kyrian, and then ... I don't know. I've never had the opportunity to make my own decisions. I'm not sure where I should go."

He tilted his head to one side in a gesture she'd grown very fond of over the past few months. "Isn't there somewhere you would like to see?"

"Isn't there somewhere
you'd
like to see?" she shot back coldly.

"Hmm," he mused. "A free Shandow?"

"What? No, Opal. Don't start thinking about that again."

"Why not? I'm an invalid now; I've nothing but time. I can still write, by proxy of course."

"Because the soldiers will find you again." She offered him more wine.

"Yes, thank you."

"You're not an invalid."

Opal lifted his arms fixing her with a tired expression. "I can't believe I'm coming to terms with this, but you aren't."

She was about to speak when a shade walked through an interior wall and into the room. It approached her, and as it did she saw the image of soldiers, in their red uniforms, swords at the waist and pistol butts sticking out of their belts. Cameo drew her sword.

"What—" was all that Opal got out before the sudden sound of many people rushing up the stairs froze them both in place.

There was a soft knock at the door.

Cameo and Opal remained silently waiting as several moments passed.

"Mister Black, it's Peg. Helena wanted me to give you a message. Can I come in?"

The assassin glanced over at Opal, then she set her sword down at the edge of the bed silently. She opened the door with incredible speed, grabbed Peg by the collar and threw her into the room, shutting the door behind her on several armed soldiers.

Peg landed hard against the table, knocking the pitcher on the floor and shattering it, and then, as she righted herself, she felt a dagger's point enter her chest just enough to draw blood. Cameo had her again. "What did you tell them?"

The redhead cried out in pain.

"Cameo, formerly of the Association? We have a warrant for your arrest," came the voice of one of the soldiers behind the door.

She looked over at Opal, her facial expressions running the gambit of surprise, relief, and eventually sarcasm. So they weren't here for Francois Mond at all. They had come for the bounty placed on the heads of all the former Association members. "Me? Really?"

Black Opal glanced at Peg darkly.

Cameo knocked her to the floor. "You turned me in?"

The woman turned over, her lip was bloodied, "No. No, it wasn't me."

"Oh?" She slammed Peg's head against the floor. "Who did?"

Blood trickled from her victim's ear, ebbing in one long, exquisite ribbon onto into her hair. For a moment Cameo hesitated, transfixed ... and then, when she realized the woman was unconscious and broken, just the same as she was when Haffef had smashed in her skull, she was repelled by her own actions.

One of the soldiers kicked the door open, and Cameo swung around. Immediately she seized the pistol from his hand and buried her dagger into his side.

"C'mon," she cajoled her next opponent to enter. This was no time for bravado, but still this was becoming old, and she was growing tired of killing people. She was getting too good at killing humans.

The next man raised his pistol, and Cameo snatched it from his hand as it discharged into the ceiling and rammed her blood-smeared dagger through his neck with her free hand. Plaster clattered to the floor. The room filled with black powder smoke, and he collapsed at her feet.