Vampire Seeker (21 page)

“I was asleep in my room, hung-over from the night…” I started.

“So
you
say,” Harry barked, and just for a moment, in the weak glowing light from the lamp, I saw a flash of his bright yellow
eyes and I took a step backwards.

“Zoe found me in my room,” I protested. “I’d just woken up.”

“Is this true, Zoe?” Harry growled.

“Yes,” she said from the darkness.

“And I’ve never been to the town, Crows Ranch,” I said, feeling now is if I did have something to hide.
“The preacher found me.”

“But where had you been and where had you come from before the preacher discovered you?” Harry came back at me.

“I’d come from London!” I shouted back at him, my fists clenched.

“And so had this killer,” Harry said. “These killings didn’t start until you arrived here.”

“I know what you’re thinking…” I started, feeling as if I were on trial. But what was my defence and who
would believe me?

“Why are you here, Sammy?” the preacher suddenly spoke up. “Has your memory returned yet?”

“No,” I whispered, knowing that I was fast running out of excuses. “All I know is what I’ve already
told you. I was chasing a man who I believed to be a killer, he put his arm about my throat, told me that I had forgotten,
and the next thing I know, I’m shooting down five men in the desert.”

“What had you forgotten?” Harry asked me.

“Sorry?”

“This man, the one who put his arm about your throat, he said that you had forgotten,” Harry said. “What
did he mean?”

“I don’t know,” I said shaking my head.

“It seems that you don’t know very much,” Louise said from beside me. “Perhaps you are this killer.”

“I’m not a killer!” I screeched at them all. “Just leave me alone.” I felt tears begin to swell
in the corners of my eyes and splash onto my cheeks. Then, drawing a deep breath, and with my lower lip trembling, I said,
“You’re right, there is a lot of stuff that I don’t know. Like I don’t know how I can fire a gun,
I’d never even seen one until I arrived in this godforsaken place. I’d never ridden a horse; there was a donkey
once, but that doesn’t count. I don’t know how I managed to kill five men in a blink of an eye. But what I really
don’t know is how a girl from the year two-thousand-and-twelve has ended up lost and bewildered in eighteen-eighty-eight!”

There was a silence, which seemed to drag out forever. Then slowly, I saw the preacher’s shadow flicker across the lamplight
as he rose from his chair. He came towards me.

“I asked you this question once before, Sammy, and I’ll ask you only once more,” he whispered, his breath
cold against my face, “What year were you born?”

“I was born in nineteen-ninety,” I whispered, and just to say that was like having a huge weight lifted from me.
I just couldn’t lie anymore. I just couldn’t keep up the pretence. And if these people – these
Skinturners
as they called themselves – were just a figment of my imagination – then did it really matter if they believed
me or not? I wasn’t sure if I really cared anymore. Perhaps if the truth was out, I could go home.

“Perhaps you hit your head harder than I first thought,” the preacher breathed into my face.

“I’m telling you the truth,” I said back, wiping the tears from my face with the backs of my hands.

“What, that you really live one-hundred-and-twenty-four-years from now? You want me to believe that?” he whispered,
like it was a private conversation just between us.

“Yes,” I sniffed. “I’m telling you the truth.”

“She doesn’t have nuthin’ under her hat but hair,” Harry mocked.

Ignoring his remark, I looked at the black shape of the preacher before me and said, “I thought you were a man of faith,
Preacher?”

“How can I have faith in a story such as yours?” he hissed, and I could smell stale tobacco on his breath.

“Did Jesus walk on water?” I snapped back.

“Stop…” the preacher growled, but I continued.

“Did he heal the sick, feed the starving, did he cheat death and rise on the third day…”

“Stop this blasphemy!” the preacher howled as if I had struck him.

“You believe he did all of those things, but were you there? Did you witness those miracles with your own eyes?”
I challenged him.

“Of course not!”

“But you still believe he did all of those things because you have
faith
,” I told him. “I don’t have any wounds to show you like Jesus did for Thomas. I can’t prove that
I’m telling you the truth. All I’m asking is you have some
faith
in me.”

“But it’s unbelievable,” Louise said.

“Any more believable than me standing in a train, halfway up a mountain, talking to a bunch of freaking werewolves?”
I spat.

“If what you say is true, then why are you here?” I heard Zoe ask me.

“I don’t know why,” I said. “I’m beginning to think it has something to do with the killings
which have been taking place. The killings back where I’m from and the killings here. I’m starting to believe
that they are connected somehow.”

Then out of the darkness, I saw the preacher’s eyes shining just inches from my face like two crescent moons. “Maybe
you were right,
future-girl
, about this man who you say you chased onto that train one-hundred-and-twenty-four years from now.”

“What do you mean?” I whispered, unable to stop myself from staring into his eyes.

“Perhaps the killer is a vampire and he is responsible for the killings here and in your world,” he said. “Maybe
you have been sent back to stop him, and to stop the killings from happening one-hundred-and-twenty-four years from now.”

“You believe me, don’t you?” I whispered.

“I believe that you
believe
,” he said, and although I couldn’t see his face, I knew in my heart that he was smiling.

Looking back into those crescent moon-shaped eyes, which glistened in the darkness before me, I said, “But why me?”

“Why not?” he whispered, and the brightness in his eyes winked out, leaving only darkness.

“I couldn’t give a rats-ass whether you’re telling the truth or not,” Harry growled from out of the
dark. “But what does matter is that Drake believes the preacher is responsible for killing those women and we helped
him.”

“I know that you didn’t kill those women,” I said to the preacher as his silhouette shifted across the carriage.
“I know none of you were involved.”

“Thanks for your support, but I think it’s a bit too late in the day for that,” Louise said.

“I can help you,” I told them. “We can help each other. We both need to catch this killer, right? You, to
prove your innocence, and me, to stop future killings from taking place.”

“So what’s your plan?” Zoe asked me. Her voice came from the other side of the carriage as if she had moved
in the darkness without me realising.

“I don’t have a plan,” I told her. “But Drake does.”

“Tell us,” Harry barked, his voice booming. Again I noticed how different he sounded as a wolfman. Did he look
just like the preacher had? Had he lost those annoyingly rugged good looks? I wondered.

“He has set a trap,” I told them.

“What kind?” the preacher asked.

“When we get to The Hanging Mine, there are going to be police officers and the Marshal from Silent Rest waiting to
take you into custody,” I confessed.

“Or kill us,” Harry barked at the preacher.

“We should get off this train - right now,” Zoe said.

“No,” the preacher whispered. “We stay on the train. We can’t get off. We haven’t fully changed
so we will die in the light.”

“We’re trapped then,” Louise spoke up.

“Not necessarily,” the preacher said thoughtfully. “I have a plan of my own.”

The preacher sent me to see Drake with a message. I told Drake that I had seen the preacher and the others re-board the train,
and that they had gone straight to their berths. Drake wasn’t surprised by this, and rubbing his hands together with
glee, he smiled at me.

“What did I tell you, Miss Carter? Vampires – all of them are! We won’t see them again until this evening,
by which time we would have reached The Hanging Mines.” Then turning to the doctor who stood beside him, he said, “Let’s
get this train moving again!”

I left Drake to return to his own berth and I went back to my own. I pushed open the door to find my carriage still shrouded
in darkness.

“I’ve passed on your message,” I whispered.

There was no reply. I didn’t need one; I knew that they had gone.
But where
? I wondered. I didn’t know what the preacher had planned – he hadn’t told me. Why not? Did it have something
to do with the
faith
thing again? I guessed so.

Pulling back the curtains just an inch, I let a slice of sunlight into my room. I felt tired, but my mind raced with the night’s
events and I knew it would be some time before I slept – if at all. On the table next to the armchair where the preacher
had hidden in the dark, I found two of his hand-rolled cigarettes and a book of matches. I popped one of the cigarettes in
the corner of my mouth and opened the matches. There were just two. Short and white with little black bulbous heads. It was
then I saw a short message scribbled on the inside flap of the matchbook.

Two smokes – two matches!

Save one of them!

Not knowing what the message meant, and too damned tired to even try and figure it out, I tore off one of the matches and
lit the cigarette I had stuck in the corner of my mouth.
One of each left
, I thought as I blew out the match.

I settled back into the armchair, and picking up the copy of
A Study in Scarlet
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, I started to read. I hoped that it might take my mind off everything I had seen and learnt since
arriving in 1888.

I woke with a start. It felt like the whole world had been violently shaken. With eyes wide, I looked about the carriage and
realised that the train had come to a stop. I was alone and slumped in the armchair where I must have fallen asleep. The book
I’d been reading was in my lap. On the table sat the match and the cigarette. I placed the book of matches in my shirt
pocket and tucked the cigarette behind my ear.

I went to the window and peered out. It was dusk, and the sun was slipping slowly behind the tops of the mountains in the
distance, like a blood-red eye. Just like I had seen before, the sun’s crimson rays poured through the giant gorges
and crevices in the mountains, giving the appearance of hundreds of blood-filled rivers flowing over and between them. I peered
left and right along the length of the train and could see that Drake’s crew was disembarking from the train. There
were shouts and orders being passed along the line of workers as they lifted the trunks from the train that they had carried
on at the start of our journey. I watched as they led our horses from the carriage with the giant wooden dropdown door. The
horses neighed and stomped their hooves into the ground, kicking up plumes of dust. I saw them bring out Moon, and he pulled
at the handler who was trying to lead him from the train.

I put on my hat, filled the empty clips on my belt with the bullets Harry had stolen from the gunsmith’s, and loaded
the chambers of my two revolvers. With my long dark brown coat flapping about my calves, and not knowing what the night would
bring, I left my carriage and climbed from the train.

Moon was neighing and still pulling at the reins as I approached the guy in the bowler hat who was trying to tame the horse.

“You don’t handle him like that,” I said.

He looked at me and said nothing. He had a finely trimmed moustache, which was black. He was smartly dressed in a grey tweed
suit and I guessed that he was one of the police officers Drake was hoping to use to snare the preacher and the others. I
tried to take the reins from him, but he glared at me and snatched his hand away.

“Hey, back off!” I scowled at him. “This is my horse.”

The guy stood and stared back at me.

“Let her take it,” Drake said, and I turned around to find him standing behind me, leaning against his walking
stick. The dying sun was so bright, at first I thought he had a long black shadow trailing out behind him. But holding a hand
up to my eyes, it was the doctor who I could see standing just behind him.

The officer handed me the reins, and stroking Moon’s muzzle, I calmed him.

“If I were you, Miss Carter, I would saddle up and ride as far away from here as possible,” Drake said. “Go
back to London.”

“I don’t think I can go back,” I told him. “Besides, I want to stay and see if what you say is right
about the preacher and his friends. I need to know if the preacher really is who you claim him to be.”

“Why?” Drake said, sounding curious.

“I’ve put a lot of faith in the preacher, and I want to see if it has been misplaced like you claim it to be,”
I told him.

“Have it your way,” he smiled at me.

The train had now been unloaded, and the trunks, suitcases, and empty crates stood neatly piled by the engine of the Scorpion
Steam, which trailed a thick line of black smoke up into the red sky. The mountains that seemed to tower above us on all sides
gave me the feeling that our journey had ended in a deep valley. Moon kicked at the hard stony ground, and spying a solitary
tree to my left, I could see the other horses had been tethered to it. I led my horse towards the others and it was then that
I saw the gaping mouth of a tunnel which led deep into the mountainside. Above the ragged-looking opening, someone had fixed
a wooden sign which read,
The Hanging Mine
. Next to the opening, I saw several boxes of what looked like sticks of dynamite, and I guessed these had been used to blow
open the mine.

As I tethered Moon to the dried-out looking tree trunk, I saw movement in the entrance to the mine. At first I couldn’t
figure out what it was, but then from the darkness stepped a broad-shouldered man, and another who was dressed similar to
the preacher. The first wore a Stetson, had a shiny silver star-shaped badge fixed to his shirt just above his heart, and
had a gun belt criss-crossed about his waist. In his hands he carried a rifle. The priest was older looking than the Marshal
and his bald head reflected back the dying rays of the blood-red sun. In his hands he clutched a Bible, and a set of rosary
beads were entwined about his fingers. Both walked over to Drake and the doctor and I joined them, interested to find out
what was being said.