Night of the Vampires (7 page)

She nodded. She didn't know why, but she felt a sting of tears in her eyes. So many dead! It was war, and men were dying every day. But this… Her heart went out to the beings she had taken down. The Rebels that lay dead had endured battle and capture, but not this unnatural thing.

They shouldn't have ended this way.

“Disease,” Cole said sadly, looking down at a soldier. “Ah, yes, Cody told me once that disease and infection killed far more men than bullets. I guess he's right. The gangrene and the vampire diseases, both.”

Wincing, Megan silently agreed, and together they hurriedly made sure that the “diseased” could not come back to strike again.

The sun was almost completely down. They hurried from the cemetery, hitching a ride into the city on a medical supply wagon. They sat in the back, on a flatbed filled with crates, forced to nearly sit atop each other.

But it wasn't a bad position, Megan thought. She was tired, and the afternoon had left her worried and confused. Her fears of a greater threat came to the fore again, and she considered mentioning something to Cole, weighing her combat-born fears against rational thoughts….

And was surprised when Cole once again took her hand from where it lay on her knee and squeezed it.

She was more surprised, at herself, when she leaned against his shoulder to rest.

He didn't move away.

 

T
HEY ARRIVED AT THE BOARDINGHOUSE
to find that the rest of their party had had an uneventful day. Cody and Brendan had scoured the churches with burial grounds, but had run out of daylight time to go on to the other cemeteries.

Brendan Vincent announced he would head to the small office of the Pinkerton agency, which dealt with many secret matters of state, so as to see that the cemetery was cleaned of the evidence of combat before morning.

Before letting Brendan go, Cody hunkered down by his wife and asked, “Alex, do you think that it's safe?”

Megan was surprised by Cody, Alex and the question.

Alex hesitated before answering him. “Cody, you know that—that I can't see things on command.”

He nodded. “I was hoping that you might have a sense.”

“I'm not feeling that it's unsafe. I
was
worried when you all left this morning, but that was quite natural, don't you think? I can't conjure a vision of the cemetery, but…I don't think we have a choice, do we?”

Cody looked at her awhile longer, smiled and nodded. “All right, Brendan. We don't have much of a choice.”

“One of us should go with the crew,” Cole said. “Me, I suppose. I know where…I know where the corpses lie.”

“Well, that's foolish. If we did miss any of the crea
tures, you'll be as vulnerable as any of the men,” Megan told him. “I can go.”

“You were falling asleep on the way back,” Cole said. “I'll go. You must have realized by now that I do know exactly what I'm up against and how to fight this enemy.” He was irritated when he first started speaking, but she supposed, even if she did have a natural immunity, she ruffled his pride when she suggested that he wasn't competent—or that he didn't have the strength. He spoke more gently when he added, “You were fighting that bunch several minutes before I reached you. You have to be far more worn-out. I'll go.”

Megan frowned, wanting to protest, but Cody put an end to that. “He knows what he's doing, Megan. Let him handle the situation.”

Cody left with Brendan. Alex rose. “I have a plate of supper for you, Megan. I saved a plate for Cole, too, but…anyway. You need to have dinner. And sustenance.”

Sustenance appeared to be a steaming cup of tomato soup; she knew that it was not. But though Megan hadn't thought that she was hungry, she was famished.

Cody went out while she was eating. Alex stood looking out the window in the boardinghouse kitchen; there was an actual kitchen building behind the house, but Martha had put in a sink with a water pump and a stove when she had begun letting out rooms. Megan knew that when she wasn't cooking breakfast for a household of guests inside the house, she prepared food for her children and herself in the kitchen building out back.

Alex seemed anxious as she peered out.

Then she turned and smiled. “Cody is taking a few precautions. He's setting up an alarm system, arrang
ing crosses, sprinkling holy water around Martha's little carriage house, as well.”

“Thank God,” Megan said.

Alex smiled at her, a twinkle of amusement in her eyes. “You knew Martha before you were brought here, didn't you?”

Caught off guard, Megan nodded. “I was afraid to say so. Brendan Vincent is so staunch a Unionist, I was afraid he would think that Martha was a Confederate spy if I let on that we knew each other.”

“Is she a spy?” Alex asked.

“No,” Megan said, with a stone-serious expression Alex could not misinterpret.

Alex smiled and took a seat at the table across from Megan.

“But you are.”

Megan shook her head. “I was a courier, and sometimes I carried information that fell into my lap. I was never actually a spy. And now…well, we're all fighting a different war.” Megan looked at the woman, staring into her eyes. “
Your
turn, Alex, please. What was Cody talking about when he asked you if it was going to be safe for Brendan and Cole?”

Alex sat back. She was quiet for a minute. “I have dreams. I see things that happen, or may happen. When I can, I try to prevent them from happening. Actually, I was once brought in for being a spy, but—” she smiled “—I became friends with the U.S. government instead.”

“Who?”
Megan demanded, wondering if highest government and military leaders in the land really understood the reality and seriousness of the vampire situation.

“We're not totally sure we trust you yet, you know,” Alex replied.

“I am Cody's sister.”

Alex smiled, curling her fingers around the cup of tea she had poured for herself. “I believe that biologically, yes, you're his sister. But this country is currently full of brothers who grew up in the same house, loving the same two parents, going to war against one another. I've personally seen this travesty ripping apart the country. So, whether we all believe you're Cody's sister is rather a moot point. None of us knows you.”

“Martha knows me. And you know Martha, too, don't you?”

Alex laughed. “Yes, I do. I know a lot of people in Washington.”

“Then ask Martha about me,” Megan suggested with both force and exasperation at this tension between them.

“I'll probably do that.”

They sat in silence for some minutes, whatever had spiked up between them dissipating for the most part. Though questions still remained.

“And you do trust some vampires,” Megan said.

“Some,” Alex agreed, smiling. She hesitated for a moment. “Actually, I have good reason to believe in the goodness of
some
vampires—as do Cody, Cole and Brendan.” She stood. “You are looking a bit worse for wear. Why, actually, you look like you've been digging in a cemetery. I had the tub filled in the back kitchen. I'll add some water and you can take a bath.”

“I'm not going to take your bath,” Megan protested.

“Oh, seriously, I insist. You look like you need it much
more than I do!” Alex told her. “I'll put more water on to boil.”

It would be good to take a long, hot bath.

Alex provided her with a nightdress and robe and a cake of her own soap; it smelled deliciously of lavender. It seemed such a luxury that night—she hadn't seen decent soap in a long time. It was growing scarce in the South.

Cody was putting the final touches on a bell-and-wire alarm system on the carriage house where Martha slept with her children. Megan made a mental note to find time with Martha alone in the morning; she didn't know what Martha knew about Cody and Alex Fox and their friends, Brendan Vincent and Cole Granger. She thought she'd be much better prepared for whatever might come if she studied up on her new associates.

She carried the water to the tub herself, determined not to let Alex tote it for her on top of the kindness she'd shown already. Once she was in the external kitchen, she bolted the door and noted the many windows she had never much paid attention to before. They were closed, the drapes drawn. It was nice. She was beginning to feel as if she was being watched far too easily.

She had never been afraid, not since she had bitten Samuel. Then her mother had sat her down to explain that she was a being of free choice, and that she must choose for herself, but that using her strength for good would certainly prove to be the best thing to do, at least in the long run. Once the war had begun, she hadn't thought much about
what
she was; she had thought about little but the men on the field who needed help so desperately. The Minié ball and the other amazing rifle technology in the North had made it certain that many soldiers would
be shot, and that most of those hit would die. She'd left Richmond with the Army of Northern Virginia, always on the lookout for the brother she knew had to be out there somewhere. She'd heard he was in New Orleans, and she'd planned to go there. But then a courier told her that he had gone out West, and that he was some kind of a hero in a town called Victory.

Impatient with herself, she dropped her lace-up boots and her muddied outfit to the floor and sank into the water. It wasn't as warm as she would have liked it, but it was delicious anyway.

And the soap! The sweet scent of lavender was a true wonder.

She leaned back and simply enjoyed the scent and the feel of cleanliness, closing her eyes and letting the water ease around her.

Then she heard a knock at the door.

She stiffened, then relaxed. “Alex? Come on in.”

She had bolted the door, she remembered. “I'm coming. Hang on just a minute, please.”

She hesitated, though. There had been no response from whoever had knocked at the door. Someone tried to twist the door handle. She heard the sound. She saw it move. But it was bolted.

There was another noise.

Now at the side window.

Then…

At the rear window.

Megan scrambled to her feet. She hopped out of the tub just as she heard the shattering of glass.

And saw the figure of a man crawling heedlessly through the shards of the windowpane that clung to the frame.

He was wearing butternut and gray. A Confederate Uniform worn by the Virginia Regulars. His uniform was worn and frayed on his gaunt, tall frame. Creeping menacingly from beneath his hat, a straggly beard, green eyes and dusty brown hair.

She knew him.

He laughed, staring at her, and she realized she was still dripping wet, and naked. She grabbed the bright white towel and covered herself haphazardly.

When he spoke, his voice was strange.

“You! Ah, you, Megan Fox. Imagine. I smelled the intoxicating scent of blood…and it's
you!
How delicious. Now, I know. And now, I have the strength, and the power—and the hunger!”

She blinked, unable to believe her eyes—or ears. And, yet…

Not so strange, not so ridiculous. So many of the young men her own age had answered the call to war— Virginians, fighting for the Commonwealth of Virginia.

He opened his mouth.

His fangs dripped saliva.

She knew this man-thing.

“Samuel Reeves!” she gasped.

B
URIAL DETAIL WAS
grim, but, although Cole had expected that someone—
something
—would leap from the small copse of trees by the cemetery's edge, nothing happened at all.

He and Brendan arrived in a military conveyance with four soldiers that had been trusted to understand that no matter how bizarre the orders given to them might seem, they must be followed to the letter.

Coming to the ground where the corpses lay, Cole saw that the soldiers with him wore bleak expressions; some of the bodies had decomposed unnaturally quickly. Sergeant Terry Newcomb was in charge of the detail, a crusty old Irishman who still bore traces of his native accent. He had seen action through the first battles of the war and been sent back to D.C. for guard duty after he'd somehow survived a shot to his leg just a fraction of an inch from a major artery. The doctor on duty had not amputated, and Terry Newcomb was damned lucky on that score. He hadn't gotten gangrene. He limped, but he was still feisty and fiercely loyal to the Union. Those under him were war-wounded, as well: Michael Hodges suffered hearing loss, Gerald Banter had lived through a bout with malaria but was still considered too weak for duty and Evan Briar had lost the tip of his trigger finger.
He was learning to shoot left-handed, but it was going to take some time.

They stood with their shovels and picks, surveying the field of dead. “It's a disease that brings on madness?” Sergeant Newcomb asked, looking at Cole.

“Yes, you could say that it brings on madness. A bloodlust. The disease is quite serious—a man may look dead when he is not,” Cole explained. “There is no cure, that's why—”

“You don't need to explain, laddie,” Sergeant Newcomb said. “I was at the prison. I didn't think that I'd see the light of day again. All right, boys, let's get to digging.”

Cole picked up a shovel. Newcomb stopped him. “Laddie, you don't need to do the grunt work with us. We know that your loyalties lie elsewhere.”

“My loyalty is to stopping this infection that kills men and women regardless of their size, their sex, their color—the uniform they choose to wear,” Cole said. “And I'm good with a shovel.”

“As am I, sir!” Brendan Vincent said, taking up the task himself.

“You're really here just to stop this—trouble?” Evan Briar asked Cole after they had worked in silence for several long minutes. “You're a Texas sheriff. You gotta be a Reb.”

“I suppose I am. But, we're so far out on the frontier, we struggle just to keep life going on a daily basis. We don't pay it much heed,” Cole said.

“But, you're still a Reb. There ain't no neutral in this war,” Briar told him.

“Look, sometimes, we're so far out, we're not even
sure we're in
either
country,” Cole said. The last thing he wanted to do was get into a political argument.

“Reb, yep. You're a Reb. So why don't you let this disease just tear up the Yankee capital?” Briar said, persistent. “Why, I'd think that your side would be sitting back in delight.”

“No man delights in the deaths of others. And we're here because we've seen this plague before. We don't want it in the North or in the South.”

“Oh, Lord Almighty!” Gerald Banter said suddenly. “You drag the body, and the head comes right off!” Gerald stood back from the hole he was digging, his mouth agape.

“It's one way of making sure that the diseased are dead,” Cole said.

“We take their heads off?” Banter asked, his tone thick.

“Yes, we take their heads off.” He might as well make it a lesson in vampire killing, since it seemed that the “plague” wasn't going to end anytime soon.

And he might as well end it all with the North and South, too.

He leaned on his shovel. “Look, fellows, this isn't an issue of the war. Let's clear that out right now. Think of it like you might think of the plague hitting Europe in the Middle Ages. It killed everyone. Commoner and nobleman alike. Frenchman, Englishman, Spaniard. Young and old. We have to stop this plague. Northerners would carry it to Southerners, and vice versa, and once a man is diseased, he doesn't care if he gives the disease to his own mother. When you're up against them, you've got two choices—you take off their heads, or you impale
them through the heart. Remember that the heart is on the upper left side of the chest. When you can, you impale them through the heart, remove the heads and burn them, but that's not often going to be too easy, so make sure you've gotten the head or the heart. I'm no man's enemy in this thing, so get that straight, too. Trust me—no man in a secret room in the U.S. government is planning to harness this plague and set it loose in the South—and no man in the South is thinking he can harness and set it loose in the North. It's a killer, bold and simple, and that's that. Can we finish?”

There was silence. They all stared at him.

Then Newcomb came over and slapped him on the shoulder. “Damn, laddie, why someone didn't just give us this information from the beginning, I don't know. Take heed to what the Reb says, my boys. We're going to stay alive in this thing, and we're going to protect our city. Let's get this done. Heads off these poor men if they're not severed already. It takes some strength to sever a man's head, so see to it that your knives are honed!”

 

When Cole and Brendan returned to the house, tired, weary and dirty, they headed toward the door, hoping to clean up some of the mud in the rear kitchen. As they walked around, Alex came flying toward them. She nearly collided with Cole.

“Alex!” Cole said, catching her.

“There's something wrong!” she told him.

“What?” he asked sharply.

She turned and pointed toward the outbuilding kitchen. “I brought some more hot water for Megan—thought she might want a little more, and I didn't have a fire
going in the hearth back there, so I brought it from here. But I heard things flying back there—and she's got the door bolted—and there's shattered glass—the ground by the back—and there's sounds of fighting going on in there…. I was on my way to find Cody when you came around.”

“Go on then, get Cody,” he said.

Cole grimly set Alex aside and he and Brendan headed for the freestanding kitchen building. He didn't go around the back to crawl through a shattered window; he put all his size and muscle into kicking in the front door. It burst off the hinges, and he was met by two people who had been locked in battle suddenly freezing and staring at him.

The man was dressed in the tattered remnants of a Southern regiment, one that appeared to be from a Virginia outfit. He had his fingers tangled in Megan's hair, and it appeared that he was trying to rip out her throat. She was clad in a white towel that she was losing—he was gratified to see that she was more concerned with remaining alive than she was with modesty.

The reborn Rebel soldier looked at him and laughed and made another move for Megan's throat, but Megan let go of the towel and caught him with a right hook that seemed to knock his head out of alignment.

“No more!” the creature cried. “No more. I am alive, and I will take you with me into the depths of the realm, Megan Fox.” He jerked, gnashing his fangs, trying again for her throat.

Cole strode in, reaching into his coat pocket for one of his remaining vials. He tossed the vial of holy water
at the being, and a burst of steam sent the man into a whirling, burning frenzy.

“No!” Megan cried in distress.

Cole ignored her; his movement was practically automated, and the protest didn't register. He lurched on forward, drawing out his stake and mallet, and pinning the creature to the wall. The body began to jerk and spasm even as it burned from the holy water meeting the evil within.

“Oh, Lord! Oh, no! Why did you do that?” she demanded.

Brendan had been behind him, waiting at the broken doorway with a vial of holy water in one hand, a stake in the other.

“Oh, my,” he said. He flushed brilliantly and backed away.

Cole let the body go. It was safe to do so. The being had gone limp after the tremors of its death throes.

For a moment, Megan stood there, sleek and damp and entirely naked, hands on her hips as she accosted him.

Then she quickly ducked for her towel, wrapping it around herself, her cheeks flaring red as she stared at him again.

“What the hell are you talking about? I just saved your life,” he told her.

“I was holding my own!”

“You were about to become dinner!” he told her.

She shook her head. “That—that was an old friend.”

“That was a vampire trying to rip you apart.” Cole yanked the stake from the creature and let it fall to the floor. He'd become adept at decapitation with a bowie knife, despite the impossible strength it seemed to take
when he first began doing it. But he'd known Cody long enough to become excellent at the task.

There was no blood; the creature had not dined in a long time, so it seemed. He must have been ravenous.

Brendan noted that the man must have been long seasoned in battle. He had pinned a note with his name and unit on the bottom left leg of his trousers.

He stared at Megan suspiciously. “Samuel Reeves?”

Holding her towel tight, she nodded.

“Did you ask him here?” Cole demanded, incredulous.

“No! No, of course not,” she protested.

“Was that entire story some kind of a trumped-up and sardonic lie? That's a coincidence that's too hard to believe!” he accused her. He didn't want it to be, but he was finding it hard to believe that they had brought up the man's name earlier—and here he was.

She gasped. “I haven't seen him in years.”

“You're certain?”

“Of course! Oh, how dare you. If I'd invited him here, would he have been attacking me? What's the matter with you?” Megan cried.

He was angry, but she was furious. She was wearing a towel.

It was an incredibly uncomfortable circumstance. He kept fighting himself to stare into her eyes—eyes that usually seemed as mesmerizing as the sun.

“You didn't want me to kill him,” Cole said harshly. “Because, in truth, he was a friend?”

“Because he—he might have given us information. Please! Stop it! It's not a shock, really. Think about it! He would be fighting with a Virginia regiment, he would be
an officer, and it's not at all surprising that he'd be held in prison in the capital. But, damn you, Cole. I can take care of myself. And I didn't want him dead.”

“He was dead already,” Cole reminded her.

“There are good vampires,” she protested.

He held very still, not wanting her to see the nature of his thoughts. There could be
good
vampires. That was true; he had seen it. It was unusual, and, sadly, many of those who might have proved able to retain their decency in their death or life after life couldn't be given the chance to prove it. Vampirism was a plague that spread too easily.

“He didn't look like a good vampire.”

“Maybe not, but we'll never know,” she told him irritably.

“And he didn't manage to rip out your throat, so you might say thank you!”

She started to speak, then closed her mouth.

“If you're telling the truth, then you really are being foolish. You were more vulnerable than you want to admit.”

“I'm telling you the truth!” she insisted indignantly.

They stared at one another for a long moment.

“Damn it!” she said. “You've got to start trusting me or we'll all wind up in serious danger.”

“Trust has to be earned,” he said.

She swore softly.

He fought to control his temper, and he knew that fighting then was no good for either of them. He shook his head. “Another body we've got to bury.”

“I could have reasoned with him,” Megan said.

“What? You're crazy. And why would you reason with
him? Are you feeling some ill-conceived guilt over what happened when you were child? Dear girl, that's insane,” Cole said, irritated.

“No, it has nothing to do with guilt.” Her voice had become raw and edgy. “He would know where all this started. What's happened is insane. These outbreaks…here and there. Someone is starting them, and—and there's someone besides us trying to fight what's happening. If you hadn't been so knife-happy, we might have gotten some information out of him. Look at his uniform! He was a lieutenant in the cavalry. He might have known where it started.”

Cody appeared at the doorway then, tense, ready for action. He stared from Megan to Cole—and to the corpse on the floor.

“Thank God you were here in time,” he said to Cole.

“Yeah, that was my thought. But apparently, Megan didn't want help. She was going to reason with the man. Before or after he ripped open her jugular, I'm not sure. But I'm done for the night. You two figure this out. Oh, and Megan, if you're such an excellent fighter that you can
reason
with a starving vampire, I'm sure you're also adept at the disposal of bodies.”

He turned and strode past Cody, who stared at him with surprise but didn't say a word. Alex was just outside, standing with Brendan. He shook his head and walked past them.

As he did so, Martha Graybow opened her door so that it was just ajar, saw him and stepped out. “Cole?” she asked softly.

He inhaled on a deep breath. “Martha, everything
is all right now.” He saw that Cody had set up alarms, and that he'd made her house safe by erecting wooden crosses—that might pass for structural supports—at the corner joints at the roofline. He was sure Cody had taken a few other precautions, as well.

He took her hands and looked into her eyes.

“I'm all right,” she said. “I was worried about Megan.”

“Megan is fine. And I'll fix the door to the kitchen tomorrow…and we'll put in a new window. Look, Martha, these are really bad times. We'll be here for a while, and you'll be paid while we are. But don't bring anyone else in. Don't ask anyone in, for the love of God. I can't really explain, but—”