Night of the Vampires (5 page)

One woman wanted his company, another was evidently more than anxious to get rid of him. He needed to see the one, and he was afraid to take his eyes off the other.

Megan was Cody's sister. And Cody certainly knew the score.

“Of course, Lisette,” Cole said. “The streets are not so bad here—the house is not on a direct march line for the troops coming and going into and out of town. Let's do stroll.”

“You will excuse us?” Lisette asked Martha, her beautiful smile all encompassing as she looked around the room.

They left by way of the rear door, the carriage entrance.

When they came around the front, Cole saw a sad-looking young woman standing on the front walk, an envelope and a clipboard in her hands. He started toward her.

“Cole, just walk, she'll come,” Lisette said, taking his arm.

“She'll come? Who is she?”

“It's just Trudy.”

“Who is
just Trudy
and why is she standing there?” he demanded.

Lisette sighed. “She's my assistant. The agency seems to think I need one, but I loathe being followed around.
Luckily, she's a little mouse and stands wherever I tell her.”

“You had her just standing outside while you came into the house?” Cole asked.

“Well, outside and around the corner. I wanted some time alone with you. Besides, it's her job. She serves me. And she's paid to do it,” Lisette said, waving a hand dismissively in the air.

She might be a mouse—a paid mouse—but Cole didn't intend to be that rude. He walked over to the woman, extending his hand. “How do you do, Trudy? I'm Cole Granger.”

The young woman flushed and nervously shook his hand. “I'm fine, thank you, sir. How do you do?”

“Well enough, thank you. It's a pleasure to meet you.”

Lisette slipped her arm through his. “Come. I have things to discuss with you.” She moved ahead. Trudy waited, then followed them at a distance.

Lisette didn't speak at first as they walked from the house toward the mall, all manner of men and women moving past them, many of them soldiers. Though it had grown immensely and was a bevy of storage, manufacturing, industry and all things associated with war, there was still something inviting about the Union capital. The president spoke daily with his constituents—and his enemies—in the White House. He took his carriage out daily, often with his Mary, and despite the fact that there were those who despised him for the war, Lincoln was a man of the people. Cole had only seen him at a distance and heard him speak to crowds; Alexandra Fox knew him. She had been arrested for knowing what she shouldn't have known once because Alex had her own
special gift. Her dreams could be prophetic. And she had tried to stop a battle, which had meant that she had found herself arrested for espionage. Lincoln had stepped in. They were friends.

Alex was no form of monster, as Cody sometimes called himself. But she was a different person. She had those dreams, or dream-visions. Alex often said that it might just be intuition, her senses warning her of what was to come.

She had never—she had assured Cole once—ever seen what the war would become.

“This is extremely distressing,” Lisette said, when they had come to the Mall at last, looking to make sure that Trudy was still a good distance behind them. The great expanse divided the streets and had been designed as park area—though it was now most often muddy terrain where troops drilled—and it finally seemed to afford Lisette some sense that they were isolated enough to speak freely. They stood in front of the Castle, the first building of the Smithsonian Institution, where even now, in the midst of the war, the work of scientists went on. James Smithson had never set foot in the United States, but the country's dream of democracy had appealed to him, and he'd bequeathed the funds to an ideal. While troops drilled, business went on, and so the museum and the Mall were dreams and ideals loved by the people, constants amid chaos.

“This?”
Cole asked.

“Megan Fox,” Lisette said.

“We didn't bring her. She found us last night at the prison.”

“Convenient. Are you certain that she hadn't been
in
the prison?”

“She had several chances to inflict damage on us and she didn't,” Cole said. “She seemed to be fighting
with
us.”

“Seemed!” Lisette said.

Cole listened to the sounds of the street, children still being children, playing on doorsteps and in patches of grass, carriage wheels running over potholes, line riders avoiding those potholes and even the rustle of fabric as ladies picked up their cumbersome skirts to cross the streets.

“Seemed?” Lisette repeated sharply.

“Look,” Cole said. “I'm here with Cody and Brendan on a mission. I'm not here as part of a war. Cody says that she's his sister, and that's that in my book. I don't believe she's here on a sinister quest to rid the country of Union forces by setting forth a league of vampires. Take the war out of this when you're speaking to me, or I'm done.”

Lisette had her hands on her hips as she stared at him; no one would mistake them for lovers at that point.

“I forget. You're one of them,” she said.
“Texas!”
She nearly spit out the word.

“Humanity,” he said flatly. “Look, are you going to tell me where we stand and what's needed, or are you going to spout political rhetoric?”

“The South will lose!”

He lowered his head for a minute. “Yes. Eventually. The blockades grow tighter, and for every Federal killed, another steps off a ship from another country, barely speaking English, ready to die like a canary sent into the coal mine of freedom. I'm done talking, Lisette. Tell me what you want, but, please, make no more references to
the evil of Texas and my brethren. Just tell me where we are with the trauma at hand.”

She pursed her lips with displeasure. “You did well last night. Extremely well. But we know that a number of the creatures escaped.”

“How?”

“Have you seen the paper this morning?”

He shook his head. “No.”

She reached into her bag and produced the morning's newspaper, unfolding it so that he could see the headline—Murder on Florida Avenue.

He took it from her hands and read the article. A Joshua Brandt, his wife, mother and two servants had been found dead. The bodies, white as sheets, had been discovered strewn about the house.

 

B
REAKFAST HAD LONG
been cleared away. Martha had gone to be with her children. Alex had tactfully taken Brendan for a “constitutional” walk. And Megan sat with Cody in the parlor, sensing what was coming next.

“You knew about me all your life?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “No, not all my life. But I knew about my father. Well, when I was young, my mother would tell me that he'd been a wonderful man, but that he didn't stay long in one place. That he…that he had a quest in life, and that his quest was important and undertaken for the sake of all humanity. I never saw our father. I was born in North Carolina, where my mother had friends. I would tell the children that I played with at parties and so on that my father was a great man, but when I was about six, I think, one of the older boys told me that my father was a drifter and I was a bastard. Shortly after, we moved
to Richmond, my mother married a fine man named Andrew Jennison and my life went on from there.”

She had barely finished speaking when the door opened and Cole stepped in. The woman,
Lisette Annalise,
was not with him. Megan had to admit she was glad. She didn't like Cole Granger and she liked him less alongside the actress who seemed to think she
was
the Army of the Potomac.

Cole looked at them then closed the door carefully. He walked over to Cody, placing a newspaper on his lap.

Cody groaned.

“What is it?” she asked.

“The plague at the prison might have been stopped, but we didn't get them all,” he replied.

Megan stood and hurried over to Cody's side, brushing past the solid granite that was Cole Granger, and looked down at the giant headline on the newspaper.

“At least it's not—Battlefield at Antietam, at Gettysburg, the Wilderness…Tens of Thousands Dead,” she said weakly, looking for something positive to say.

“How many do you think made it out?” Cody asked Cole.

“Can't be many. But even one is enough.”

Cody exhaled. “Well, hopefully, the ones who escaped were new, young vampires that will need rest by daylight. But where?” he asked softly, frowning.

“St. Paul's, Rock Creek—Prospect Hill?” Megan suggested. The former, a Colonial church, had quite an impressive burial ground. The latter was a large expanse, fairly new, but with many plots sold. “Oak Hill Cemetery? And beyond. The law stipulated not so long ago that new interments had to be outside the city line…but there are crypts and vaults in the oldest churches,
as well. Most likely new vampires would find rest in a cemetery—I don't think they'd be able to endure the burn of trying to sleep within an actual house of worship.”

“My bet is on Prospect Hill,” Cody said. “It is all hallowed ground, but many who would have been buried there perished on battlefields far away, and their remains were never returned.”

“Though Prospect Hill is German-American,” Cole noted, “I remembered reading a small article on it the day it was consecrated.”

“Yes, but many bought plots there,” Megan said.

Cody stood and looked at them with determination. “We'll flag down a carriage,” he said. “It's not walking distance.” He was thoughtful and then shook his head wearily. “Oak Hill is possible, too—its natural landscape lends itself to many places where a vampire might find enclosures in which to rest.”

“And if one of the older, seasoned vampires survived, he might have a place already set up…
anywhere,
” Megan said.

“We'll just keep searching. We'll start with Prospect Hill, move on to Oak Hill…and go from there.”

Cole nodded in agreement. “The surviving attackers must be found, but we also must get into the hospital morgue where the remains of the deceased were taken. Quickly. I don't want to wait for nightfall—better that we handle the situation now.”

“All right,” Cody began. “Brendan will come with me. We'll start on the cemeteries. You can bring Megan—”

“What? Oh, no,” Cole said.

“You know, cowboy,” Megan said, irritated, “one day, you'll be grateful to have me at your side, when your
weakness is shown to be great next to those you choose to pursue.”

“I know my business. You ask your brother. I learned to hold my own the hard way,” Cole said. “Why, I nearly killed
you
last night.”

“Oh, no, you did not,” Megan corrected him. “I could have killed you, but instead, I saved your skin. You were with Cody. And then I offered you my services.”

“You were at my mercy,” Cole said softly.

“I—”

“All right, stop!” Cody said. “Cole, you come with me, and I'll send Megan and Brendan—”

“No! I know she's technically on our side, but you're not going to risk Brendan going with her,” Cole said.

“It's early enough,” Megan said. “And, Cody, you're a trained medical doctor. It will make sense if we both go to the hospital. Then, we'll go to the cemeteries together. We are talking vast tasks at each location. The hospitals are huge, and—”

“Even the morgue area will house many,” Cole interrupted quietly.

“I think, since resources are limited, the murdered family might be kept separately,” Megan concluded. “In the morgue area, but separate from those who have died of their battle wounds, or of disease.”

“All right. We go together. Cole—Megan
is
my sister,” Cody said.

“One you've known for less than twenty-four hours,” Cole pointed out.

Megan moved toward the door. “Sheriff Granger, we need to leave. You may come—or not. As you see fit. But I am going.”

She wasn't sure what he said; it was beneath his
breath. She didn't think that it was good. She didn't much care.

“I need my coat,” he said. “You'll wait.”

“I'll get Brendan and my medical bag,” Cody said.

Cole was heading to the rear, for the hooks by the kitchen door, to retrieve his railway frock coat.

It was a long coat. Megan thought that it was also probably well supplied—with stakes, a mallet and a number of sharp knives. With his height and the length of the coat, his heavy supply of armor might not be noted beneath its folds.

She made it out the door first, walking purposely for the street and seeking a carriage to hail. Cole was right behind her, towering over her and lifting his hand high as he hurried her along. Just as Cody and Brendan caught up to them, a carriage for hire pulled alongside them and Cole asked that they be delivered to the Lincoln General Hospital. The four of them climbed in, Brendan being the one to first appear the gentleman and hand her up the footstep so that she might take a seat.

In short time, they reached the hospital. It was immense, founded in 1862 because of the staggering number of war injuries and diseases that plagued the soldiers. When they set foot at the emergency arrivals area, it seemed that the place was nothing but chaos, which was good for their purposes. Cole had a letter of authority from the Pinkertons—who were ostensibly investigating the mysterious murders—and a grim medic, hurrying from one tent to another, directed them to the far rear of the encampment.

“Did we really need all four of us for such a task?” Brendan grumbled, wincing as they walked past a pile of
amputated limbs. “My dear!” he added, pulling Megan close to him. “These are not sights really fit for a lady.”