Bride of the Night (18 page)

There was silence for a minute. Everyone was contemplating what he'd said, and listening for the sound of wings.

“Will they come by day?” Father Timothy asked.

“By day, those who are new to come back are usually extremely weak, and the daylight hurts them. They come by night,” Finn said.

Father Timothy said, “Men! Fashion stakes of the pews. I will bless more water. Come, we will work as a community tonight. Whether we sympathize with the North or the South, we will remember tonight that we
are all God's creatures in this church, and we will work together!”

Father Timothy might have been young, but he seemed to know that he needed to be the one to guide his flock. That meant being God's warrior and, as such, strong this night.

Finn gave the man a nod, and Father Timothy stepped over the befuddled mayor and all authority to assert his own.

Finn walked over to Tara, who was standing with Pete.

She looked concerned. Finn knew that she was worried about these people; this was her home. He noticed many speaking to her, and he had a feeling that even before tonight she was admired and loved by many more of her neighbors than she might have thought.

“There have been more mysterious deaths, some have told me,” she said to him. “That means…well, there may be more about to come back to life in the cemetery.”

“The graveyard here seems to be in one piece,” Finn replied.

Pete stepped in. “There's a cemetery in the middle of the island, on the highest ground. Years ago, a storm swept through, and the bodies buried closer to the south beach area popped out of the ground, and caskets and corpses floated down the main street and rose into the trees. That's where all the interments they're talking about took place.”

Finn looked at Tara. “And you want to go to the cemetery.”

“I have to, Finn.”

He could stop her. He did have the strength, and the authority. He was sure that Captain Tremblay and Richard had wanted to stop her coming here, too.

“Tara—”

“It's nearing dawn, Finn. We can leave Pete here. If the people stay in the church, they will be safe, and Pete and Father Timothy and the mayor will see that they don't leave. Please, we have to stop this. I'll never be able to leave the island if I'm not certain that the people are going to be all right.”

“Tara, don't you see? We'll not have a guarantee, no matter what,” he said gently.

She shook her head. “They'll fight those they don't know—those they don't see as their loved ones. You know as well as I do how seductive the newly changed can be. Please, Finn, we have to do what we can
before
their own deceased make it here.”

Pete looked at Finn gravely. “She's right—they can recognize an enemy, but they will fall prey to loved ones.”

Finn groaned softly and started to walk away.

“Finn!” she cried.

He turned back. “Yes, yes, we're going. I'm going to tell Father Timothy our suicidal plan.”

 

F
INN WHISTLED WHEN
they left the church.

Tara looked at him curiously.

He paused in the churchyard, looking around. “I'm forgetting my borrowed horse is not Piebald,” he told her, with a wry grin.

“The horses ran. They're smarter than humans,” she said.

“So we walk.”

“I know the way,” she assured him.

They started inland, moving swiftly. As they did so, they watched the sky, but no shadows fell around them. There was no beat of wings in the air.

She wanted to speak to him, to reach out in some way. But theirs was an awkward relationship, so fraught with instinctive desire, and torn apart by circumstances. They were enemies, and they were allies.

“Thank you,” she told him.

He smiled tightly at her side. “For? Destroying Richard's ship and taking you both captive?”

“For knowing when your enemy isn't your enemy. And for tonight, for the people of my island.”

He nodded. “No one wants the death of anyone. Yes, the armies will continue to rip each other apart, and God knows how many more men will die. But…we can stop some of this bloodshed, if nothing else.”

She nodded, lowering her head. “I was afraid, at first, that you would turn me down, thinking it best that I remained here, and plagued you no more about President Lincoln. But I had forgotten, of course, that I'm your prisoner.”

He was silent, which puzzled her.

“You did come to find Gator,” she reminded him.

He hesitated, and she pulled back, catching his hand. “What?” she asked him.

He watched the sky, and listened, not ready for an instant to neglect the danger of their situation. Then he looked at her.

“I'm wondering…” he started, with an impenetrable look on his face. “I can't help but think that this…attack came after we captured you and Richard on the island.”

She stiffened. “I assure you, I was no part of any of this, and Richard is—Richard is a man. A good man, but just a man.”

“I'm not accusing you again,” he said quietly.

“Then?”

“What if we should have headed straight north? What if, by coming here, we actually put these people in danger?” he asked.

“I don't know what you mean. What would have happened tonight if we hadn't been here? We couldn't have caused what happened—we weren't here for the strange deaths over the past few days.”

“I'm wondering if it wasn't all part of a plan…?.”

She remained puzzled. “But…
whose
plan?”

He took a deep breath, studying the sky once again. “Finn, please?”

He looked at her, and despite the fact that they needed to be so very wary of everything around them, she couldn't help but feel a tremor of warmth, and realize again just how much she admired him, and cared for
him. His eyes, with their unusual cast of crimson, were so striking amid his dark features. He stood so tall and strong against all odds, and his actions were as powerful as his appearance and his abilities. She thought that he was truly a man of honor, and she was grateful that he had come to believe in her, and in Richard and Pete and others because of her.

“There may well be a traitor among our ranks,” he said.

“You mean…”

“Yes, I mean someone within the Union ranks who is, in truth, a Southern sympathizer, and as a sympathizer, mistakenly believes that President Lincoln should be killed. God knows, our beliefs and our loyalties can twist our thinking. Those who supposedly love and fear God the most are prone to kill in His name, when surely God looks down in horror.”

“Who?” she asked.

“Duck!” he told her suddenly.

She felt a whir pass her by, and she turned, and she saw that while he had been ever vigilant, she herself had failed at the task. She had nearly been knocked over by the arrival of a shadow, someone moving swiftly in the night. Someone now standing just ten feet away, on the path that would lead them into the cemetery.

A child.

She felt her heart lurch. It was a little girl with long golden hair and huge blue eyes. She carried a large
stuffed doll, and as she looked at them, she stuck her thumb in her mouth.

Then she smiled, and said with a pout, “I want to play.”

Tara looked at Finn.

“She's a sweet innocent girl no more!” he warned her.

“But—”

The little girl suddenly started to laugh. She dropped her thumb and her doll and looked at Tara with her eyes bright. “I'm hungry! So hungry!”

Lifting off the ground with the breeze, the small form moved to stand directly in front of Tara. Tara was still stunned, struck by the age of the little girl.

“Hungry!”

She grabbed Tara's skirt.

Finn ripped the child away, throwing her on the ground and pinioned her with his sword. The child began to thrash and spasm, her teeth gnashing as she stared at them, her mouth opening, fangs elongating.

“Finn, please, swiftly!” Tara pleaded.

He obliged her, withdrawing the sword, and—Tara looked away—quickly severing the neck.

Finn gripped her by the shoulders. “You can't fall prey to appearances! You must be strong!” he told her.

She nodded, but still, it was impossible to believe that a child could become such a monster.

“Let's hurry,” he said.

They walked swiftly to the gates. The moon was falling, and in the next minutes daylight would come.

They entered through the wrought-iron gates and were greeted by whitewashed aboveground crypts, in-ground burials, weeping angels and downcast cherubs. A large brick tomb sat among those that were white and opalescent in the waving moonlight. All seemed to be quiet.

“Perhaps we were all wrong,” Tara whispered.

“It's a big cemetery,” Finn commented grimly. “So many vaults…”

They started walking along the main pathway. Wild-flowers and weeds grew among the graves, even in winter. Lone trees stood here and there, casting great shadows in the strange light that meant the coming end of darkness, the dawning of day.

“There,” Tara murmured.

“Where?”

“The large oak over there…I thought I saw something.”

“Let's go.”

As he spoke, Finn almost stumbled. Tara caught his arm, but he had righted himself.

“What is it?” she asked.

“An open grave.”

He hunkered down, and she lowered herself beside him. She could see that the earth had spewed out, as if from some inward eruption. At closer inspection, they
could see that the coffin within had been shattered, as well.

A plain wooden marker stood at the head of the grave, reading: “Lieutenant Abraham Winters, First Florida Volunteers. While the enemy could not make his great heart shatter, so did the coming of fever. God's will. May he rest in peace.”

Finn rose, looking around. Tara held still, biting her lower lip.

“Tara?”

“I knew him,” she said softly. “I played with him…here, as a child.”

“Tara, he is no longer the man you knew.”

Finn caught her hand and dragged her to her feet. He whispered close to her ear. “There are more…?. The shadow you saw…it's there again, but if you'll look, there is more than one. You must be ready. You mustn't hesitate.”

She nodded.

He kept her hand. He drew her along with him, and she didn't understand where he was leading her until she realized he'd gone to one of the aboveground vaults where the coffins were in rows, one atop the other. The seals around the graves were tight.

He'd chosen a place where they could have their backs to the solid wall created by the graves.

He had barely gotten them there before the first shriek came.

She looked. The great shadow by the tree was mov
ing; several of the newly changed advanced toward them. A young girl of perhaps seventeen, an older man and another young man. Then she saw Abe Winters, a handsome young man in his militia outfit; he'd been buried with his sword, but kept it sheathed, as of yet. None of the others was armed.

The newly dead seldom knew that they should be.

“Tara! Why, Tara Fox, it's so good to see you,” Abe began. “The war was hard and long…?. I was injured and they sent me home to heal. It's so good to see you, so very good. I was homesick…and I'm home, and you're here!”

He looked at her as he always had. His hat rode jaunty over his brow and his thick honey-colored waves of hair. His smile was the smile he had always had. She couldn't help it; she found herself listening to the tone of his voice.

“Tara, no!”

Finn stepped forward just as Abe Winters led the group toward them. Abe saw the danger as Finn produced his sword, but too late. Her old friend went down. The others hesitated, pausing again to stare.

Then the young woman let forth a guttural, chattering sound of fury and sprang. Tara fell back against the wall of sarcophagi and raised her own sword quickly. She caught the girl in the throat and, though sickened, managed to draw back and strike again. It wasn't a clean sweep. The woman fell down, choking and screaming,
and the sound was terrible, but Tara gritted her teeth and swung and swung again.

Again a moment of stillness as the others stared, processing what had happened. They turned to run.

“We can't let them go, Tara, come on!”

Finn gave chase. It was horrible as he caught the old man from the rear, but his strike was swift and sure, and the thing went down.

Tara ran behind to follow. But there was nothing for her to do. Finn had swiftly caught up with the others, and hastily finished them off.

She stood in the cemetery, shaking. He came back to her, taking her by the shoulders, and pulling her against him. “It's all right. You were fine, and you'll
be
fine. And you were right—the people would have fallen to their own loved ones if these undead had reached the church. We all want miracles. We all want those we've lost to come back from the dead.”

“Not like that!” she whispered.

“Not like that.”

As he spoke, the moon disappeared. The cemetery suddenly was lightened by streaks of mauve and crimson. The first hint of the sun was sending tendrils up into the eastern sky.

“We can go back,” he said. “We can let the people go home for the day.”

“And then?”

“And then, we'll bide another night. But, if I'm right, all will be calm.”

“Calm,” she repeated, searching out his eyes.

“Because I believe that the evil will be waiting now. Waiting to set sail with us.”

W
ITH THE SUN RISING
and a brilliant day on the horizon, Pete returned to the fort to report on the night's events. Neither Finn nor Tara went back with him.

The Hawkins family had made a bed of coats and blankets, so they were able to catch a few hours of sleep. During the day, the people returned to their homes, all to gather food and clothing for the following night they would spend in the church.

Tara had known it was inevitable that she'd dream of Lincoln again. She was standing in the center of the mall in Washington, D.C., watching as masons worked on one of the new buildings for the Smithsonian. While she stood there she saw the scurry of people in the capital—wounded soldiers limping, mothers with children, volunteers bringing amputees out to the mall for some sun and politicians going past in their buggies or carriages. Schoolchildren ran across the grass, waving their bound books at their sides.

She saw a poster on a tree advertising a musical benefit for injured soldiers, and another announcing a play. A young boy in the street was hawking newspapers. Life went on, in spite of war; only the canvas it was played
upon seemed different. To the one end of the mall, she could see the Capitol building—at the other end, the White House. Scaffolding rose around the Washington Monument.

She felt a hand on her shoulder, and she turned. President Lincoln was there. “Beautiful day, my dear. Beautiful day.”

“It's cold.”

“Yes, it's cold. Cold as the grave.”

“Where is your escort, sir?”

“Oh, I'm sure there is someone about, watching me. Shall we walk?”

She strolled along at his side.

“Mary had another séance last night. She said that Willie came and spoke to her. I fear that she misses the child so much that it is causing her to become unbalanced. I'm afraid for my poor Mary.”

“What about you, sir? Have you attended the séances?”

He nodded. “Not as many as Mary…but I have listened to the mediums, and the soothsayers, and mostly, I have listened to my own heart, and my own mind.”

He stopped and looked at her, holding her shoulders. “None of us can bear the weight of losing a loved one. We all want our loved ones back. But what God has taken belongs to God, and none of us may return from the grave.”

She shivered again, thinking of the corpses that had risen in the cemetery.

And she felt a deeper tremor.

Lincoln was wrong. Sometimes, things do come back.

She couldn't say that to the president. Not to a man who had lost children—one during his term as the president—and not when he carried the weight of nearly six hundred thousand deaths upon his shoulders.

“Oh, sir! I know what you are up against. I know the enemy we fight, the many enemies we fight. Your child Willie certainly belongs to God now, and I believe that there is a very different day, and different place, where we will see our loved ones as God intended we should all meet again.”

He looked at her. “Don't let me come back. When the call comes, let me go and be with him.”

“It won't be for a long, long time,” she told him.

“I know what I saw in my dream.”

He pointed to scaffolding on the “castle,” the first building to house the Smithsonian Museum. Others were rising around it now. “This is a museum for the American people. All the American people. And the dream of the Union is something that can never die. It's something that will always change, as it was set forth by the great men who argued, debated, befriended and loathed one another. Even as they wrote the Declaration of Independence, individual men had a say, and they were not all popular, or beloved. Washington spent a winter at Valley Forge, and all hope seemed lost, but somehow they prevailed when all odds were against us.
We are destined to grow, and continually be a melting pot, and one day, equality will mean
all
men, not men of a certain color or nationality. That will live. Rest assured, that will live.”

His voice seemed to fade as he spoke. When she turned to face him, he was gone, and there seemed to be dark clouds and black-winged shadows down the mall.

“Tara!”

She woke to the soft-spoken whisper of her name, and saw that Finn was by her.

“You were dreaming again.”

“I was with him. We were walking on the mall.”

He started to pull away. She grabbed his arm. “Finn, I believe he is in danger.”

“I know that he is in danger,” Finn said. “He is always in danger.”

“He said that he—he doesn't want to come back. He wants to see Willie in heaven.”

“In time, let's pray that we all meet in heaven—indeed, that there is a heaven.”

She sat up and looked around. The church was empty, except for Father Timothy, who was at the altar praying over water, with a young acolyte by his side.

There was no one to pay them any heed.

“Finn, how did you come to be…what you are?”

“I was born this way, the same as you,” he told her.

“But what about others? You said that I have a sister and a brother,” she said.

He nodded. “I told you, I know
of
them. I don't know them.”

“And you believe that…they're not evil.”

He smiled and assured her, “Not evil at all.”

“But our father…what do they know about him? Men often think that women are foolish, that they give their hearts to men who play them falsely. But you didn't know my mother. She would have never loved someone evil.”

He hesitated. “There are cases where someone is turned—completely turned—and yet, they have still been saved.”

“We…we dispatched children last night, Finn.”

“Because, at the point we met them, there was no hope.”

“So you can believe that my father isn't evil?”

He brushed his fingers gently against her face. “My father was not evil,” he told her. “But when he changed, he was with his father, and they'd been on a hunting expedition into the Dakotas. They were with an elderly Sioux man, Jim Whitefeather. When the attack came, Jim tried to protect and warn them—
he
had vampire blood in him. My father told me the worst of it was that they recognized one of the turned as a farmer who'd owned the property near his father's, and they weren't under attack because the monsters were hungry, but because the neighbor wanted my father's property. My grandfather was ripped to shreds. My father was killed, or nearly killed—I'll never know the total truth of that
now—but Jim Whitefeather knew how to save him and how to guide him. If there's someone there…if a life can be saved, brought back with the blood of another vampire before death, then the person's life can go on as it did before. When death comes, only those who are very lucky—those who have a guide—stand a chance of retaining their sense of humanity. I've seen where a father hesitates, though, when seeing his own child. But unless someone has learned to control the desperate need for blood, that someone will go after sister, brother, wife, lover—child.”

Tara put out a hand and touched his face. “You've seen so much that's so horrible.”

He caught her hand, holding it against his cheek, and he smiled. “I wasn't alive yet when my father was changed, obviously. I've seen the horrible—we've all seen the horrible. But what you always have to remember is that this disease, as we call it, is no respecter of children, the good or the innocent, once they wake with no one and feel the hunger. It's as if you come out of a deep sleep, and for a few minutes, you remember your loved ones…but then the need is a burning inside, and it blocks out all humanity. When my father came out of the sleep, Jim was there. He had shot a buck, and he was able to feed my father before the hunger took full hold. He talked him down, talked him through it. Jim had seen things before, and he knew what to do.”

“But later…he couldn't save your parents?”

“Jim was very old,” he told her. “He reckoned that he
was about fifty when he had been changed. He could remember the continent before any Spaniard, French, Englishman—any white man. When his last wife died, he went to the hills alone. He told us all goodbye, and to pray for his soul, because he believed that he had one, and that the Buffalo Woman had walked with him all of his life, and he'd meet the Great Father. He felt he'd spent his time on earth, and he went out and willed himself to die. I was young when I accompanied my father into the hills and found Jim. My father saw that all his tribal rites were carried out, and I believe that he did find peace. And I learned from my father, who was able to lead me from the time I was born.”

“My father could still be out there—and be decent, wherever he is?” she asked.

Finn looked away for a moment. “I know of your brother and sister, because we have mutual friends in Washington—good friends who know about
us,
and who know that they need us to combat the outbreaks when they occur.”

He stood suddenly; she, too, heard the sound of hoof-beats.

Father Timothy paused in his rite, looking at Finn. Finn waved to him and headed to the main door of the church.

Tara followed Finn.

Captain Tremblay had ridden back with Pete. When they stepped outside, Tara saw that the day was truly striking; the sun rose high, the sky was crystal blue,
the air was cool and the breeze that blew in from the ocean was sweet. It had rained sometime before, and it seemed that the world was fresh-bathed, almost as if the sky had known that the land needed to be cleansed from the night before.

Captain Tremblay and Pete dismounted and Tremblay lifted a hand in greeting as Finn walked out to him. “The mayor is coming, with some of the other town councilmen,” Tremblay said.

Finn nodded. “Was there any more trouble last night at the fort?”

“It was quiet, but all are now on guard. And that, of course, is what we must discuss with the mayor.” Tremblay looked at Tara and hesitated. “Most of the Union forces have gone northwestward. The Cow Cavalry is expected to make advances on Union troops near Fort Myers and in the Tampa Bay area. There will be no reinforcements at the fort now. Every man and woman here—Union and Confederate, military and civilian—must be prepared to defend and fight together. Especially because, if I've understood you correctly, you are still eager to reach the North with all haste.”

Finn nodded. “Yes. And I believe that while there may still be pockets of danger here, once we're gone, they will be minor. The intelligence behind these attacks, I feel, will follow us.”

“
Is
there intelligence behind such attacks?” Tremblay asked.

Tara couldn't help but speak up. “Is there intelligence behind any war?” she asked.

Tremblay looked at her, shook his head sadly. “We fought for the Union, young lady. Your side fought for an intangible
cause,
and in this, I honestly believe that God was on our side.”

“States' rights,” she said.

“But no one has a right to own another human being,” Tremblay said.

“Or to kill off native peoples, assuming them all savages—”

Finn lifted a hand. “We have no control over either for the moment, Tara, Captain. We need to leave these people safe. Let's go in.”

Inside the church, Father Timothy was waiting for them. Tara noted that only a few pews remained. There was a large stack of stakes now piled up near the baptismal font, and Father Timothy had gathered old medicinal and alcohol bottles, and they, too, were amassed in rows near the pile of stakes. Many people had left jackets, coats and blankets; they would be returning by nightfall.

“I have prepared as best I can,” Father Timothy told them.

“Excellent. Before dusk, have the church bells ring,” Captain Tremblay said.

The door opened again. The mayor had arrived with a contingent of councilmen. He paused in front of Captain Tremblay.

Captain Tremblay offered him his hand.

The mayor took it and they shook. “This must never, never go into the records. God knows, we might both be written down as traitors.”

“This is just a battle of men. There will be no logs written,” Captain Tremblay agreed. “Those people who are not here may not understand, and history might well make fools and renegades of us all.” He hesitated, looking over the mayor's head to Finn. “We'll stay tonight. We'll watch well, tamp down any last offenders. Then, tomorrow, I must set sail. We'll pray that both Union troops and Key West's citizens will join together, and combat a common enemy, for once remembering that we are actually brothers, though we may be brothers at odds.”

The mayor shook Tremblay's hand again. He stepped back, saluting him. “I will have the citizens armed and ready. We will keep guard here at the church, while you maintain the fort.”

“We will be here tonight, as well,” Finn assured the mayor, shaking his hand, as well.

The mayor looked past him to Tara. “Miss Fox, our gratitude,” he said. He smiled suddenly. “Forgive those of us in this town who were rude to your mother, or ever treated you as anything but our finest citizen. Pete, our gratitude.”

Tara nodded. She'd never seen anyone treat her mother with disrespect, but she knew well that many
citizens had whispered about her behind her back, and that she had always been looked upon as an oddity.

Tara smiled at the mayor. “I'll be back,” she told him. “This is my home.”

“It is your home, our home,” he said, looking at Pete. “And when you return, we'll all rebuild together.”

He left, followed by the councilmen, who all noted how the church was prepared as they departed.

The mayor paused before leaving. “Father Timothy!” he called.

“Sir?”

“We are grateful,” the mayor said and left.

Father Timothy looked after him.

“How odd,” he said.