Cameo and the Vampire (5 page)

Several soldiers pushed their way into the room, and one took aim at Black Opal, who was still sitting in the straight-backed chair, looking on placidly.

"Get down, Opal!" Cameo yelled at him.

He spun to the ground in a sudden flurry of motion. The bullet blasted a hole through the chair's wooden back.

Now he was up. Opal raced through the smoke-filled room and knocked the man, who had just shot at him, to the floor.

* * * * *

A third shot rang out.

The first had agitated him, but he wasn't certain how to respond. By the second gunshot, and the sounds of a scuffle upstairs, the barkeep took off his apron, let himself out of the bar, and strolled out the door. And by the third Jules jumped up.

He stood in the center of the tavern as patrons began to hurry outside. Just beyond the main door he saw the red uniforms of Shandow's royal guard rushing toward Hattie's. An entire second unit.

As the last woman darted out the door, he slammed it shut and barred it with a heavy table procured from the center of the room.

* * * * *

A soldier grabbed one of Opal's splints and threw him backward. He stumbled, emitting a scream of pain, unable to quell it. The pain radiated up his arm. For a moment he cradled his right hand in the crook of his left arm, much to the amusement of the soldier. He came toward Opal and slammed the butt of his smoking pistol against the dandy's free hand.

The highwayman shrieked as he turned away from his assailant, looking for somewhere to hide, but it was a very small room with a bed and one window. He scrambled across the bed and slammed into the glass with his shoulder.

Cameo was pinned down by four soldiers who lifted her off her feet and were hefting her out of the room.

"She's strong!" one complained as she shoved him into the doorframe.

"She's not human."

"We should kill her now."

Suddenly, the man who had been holding her arm tightly had a bloody sword sticking from his chest, and then it was gone. Confused, he collapsed, and she grabbed the sword hilt of a man clutching one leg, and then the man holding her other arm perished silently. With no one now holding up her shoulders, she fell back, and there, directly in front of her face, were a pair of black boots.

The other soldiers dropped her lower half to the ground, and she felt her body meet the wooden floor with a shocking
thud
, but she pulled herself to her feet just as rapidly, with supernatural speed.

A tall, imposing figure dressed in black looked back at her from within the room. Cameo had single-handedly taken out eleven of Shandow's royal guard. He stood amidst the corpses.

Their eyes met.

She had blood spattered across her face.

"You sounded like you needed help," Jules glanced away and down at the littered floor.

"Haffef wanted you to keep me safe?" she scoffed, moving into the room. Opal had crumbled onto the bed and was sitting with his back to them now, and she walked protectively to his side.

"No," he said softly.

She met Jules' eyes again. He was standing motionless in the center of the room.

"There's another brigade outside the front door."

Cameo turned and kicked out the window.

Opal silently cursed himself for bothering to batter the opaque glass with his shoulder, which was now injured and bleeding.

"We're only on the second floor," she said, addressing Jules as she gathered up her shoulder-pack, and then moved back over to assist Opal. "The climb isn't bad at all."

"Is that an invitation?" he hissed.

She climbed out the window, carrying Opal. "Do I have a choice in the matter?"

Jules was now in motion. He crossed the room with supernatural grace. "No, I guess not."

* * * * *

Opal awoke with a start. He'd been dreaming of some long-forgotten lady, and then, as the dream progressed, he noticed his hands were beginning to ache, and he said as much to the young lady in his dream, and then the dream faded, and he opened his eyes. Pain shot up his fingers and seemed to be ebbing up his arms, throbbing. He tipped his head back—chin pointing to the ceiling—which was black. He had no idea where he was. He tried to remember how he had gotten wherever it was he was, and whom he was with.

He sat up. The point of a sword poked him in the chest. He followed the sword's point up the blade until he found the man holding it.

It was Jules. He was sitting in a dark corner, with the slender light from a tiny, barred window lighting his face and a sliver of his body. He seemed displeased.

"I could kill you right now."

Opal held his breath for a moment, wondering if he would. "Yes, I suppose you could," he said raggedly. "Not very sporting of you, though."

Jules tilted his head to one side, a sardonic smile spreading across his face. "Like I care."

The dandy waited for a moment. If Jules did kill him, then perhaps the pain of living would be over, so there was that to look forward to. But then nothing happened. He felt the point twirling around against his skin. "Look, if you're not going to murder me—"

"What? What is it Opal? What can I do for you?" Jules snapped, tossing the sword off to one side. It clattered against another wall that was much closer than Opal imagined it to be.

"Do you have any pain killer on you?"

Jules emitted a huff of amusement. "No. I don't."

"Alcohol?"

The assassin sighed and leaned back into the dirty wall behind him. "No."

Opal bit his lip. "All right ... that's all right...."

"Who are you reassuring?"

The dandy looked down at the splints on his arms. The one on the right hand was broken, and then he began to remember the fight with the soldiers. "Where's Cameo?"

Jules pointed just behind Opal.

She was asleep on the cold floor. He knew she had alcohol, and probably the pain killer, too.

He turned back to Jules.

The assassin was staring at the ceiling.

"Jules?"

Jules looked at Opal contemptuously. "So you're Francois Mond."

"Uh ...." Opal wished Cameo was awake. He was in too much pain to deal with this idiot. "You're enjoying this, aren't you?"

"Enjoying what?" Jules perked up. "Your agony?"

"Yes."

"Of course not. That would be wrong...."

"Ah, yes. Well, dear boy, perhaps you could take the flask out of the top of Cameo's boot and give it to me?"

Jules smirked. "And why would I do that?"

"Perhaps you were for the revolution?"

"I wasn't very aware of it. I was three."

"Right. I should've guessed that." He glanced down at his shoulder and noticed the dried blood on his sleeve. He didn't even feel the pain of it until he became aware that he'd been cut.

Jules turned away. "Besides, she'd wake up."

Opal struggled over to where she lay. "Cameo."

Annoyed, Jules rearranged his cloak about himself.

"Hmm?"

"Wake up," Opal whispered against her hair.

"Opal?"

"I need a swallow of the tincture."

She sat up, rubbed her face briskly with the palm of her hand, and then rummaged in her shoulder-pack until she found the ceramic flask.

Jules watched in disgust as she fed it to Opal.

"Where are we?" the dandy asked as he leaned back against a coffin. The drug was already beginning to lessen the pain. He felt sleepy.

"In a cemetery," Jules said cuttingly.

Cameo turned toward him. "I see you two haven't killed each other yet. That's reassuring."

Opal smiled, a faint little smile, eyes closed. "Oh yes, very."

Jules' eyes flicked from Opal and then back at Cameo. "I didn't save your life so that I could kill you later."

"I'm not Black Opal."

Jules studied Opal, who was now falling into a drug-induced stupor. "It wouldn't be very
sporting
of me."

Cameo raised an eyebrow.

"I had an opportunity, and I didn't kill him, all right?"

"Let's keep it that way, Jules."

"Or what?"

"Or I'll kill you."

Jules lowered his eyes to the dirty floor. "You don't have to threaten me. I'm not going to hurt you, or ... him. You spared my life. I'm not going to take yours now."

"Opal didn't spare your life."

"No," he hissed. "I'm just being nice about that."

Cameo took a drink from her flask. "Yeah, you're a real good guy, Jules."

He folded his arms.

"Why don't you try to get some sleep?"

"It smells like death in here."

"Does it?" She sniffed one of the coffins, and then her own hair. "I didn't notice."

He met her corpse-like eyes, knowing full well what she was thinking as she was looking into his. That they, very possibly, were the reason for the stench of death in the mausoleum, rather than the long-dead occupants ... if there even was anything left of these two in the stone coffins.

The idea saddened Jules a little. He tried to put it out of his mind. "How can you be so glib about it?"

"Years of practice." She offered her flask to him.

He stretched forward to take it from her. The mausoleum was cramped and he was tall. "I'm tired of cemeteries."

She caught Opal as he slumped forward, now sound asleep, and eased him back to the floor tenderly. "The Azez still hasn't melted. We could chance it and travel over the ice tonight."

"Back to Lockenwood? I've so many good memories about that place."

Cameo smiled and took the flask back. "Well, it's that or stay here and deal with the over-zealous royal guard, and we're all wanted here."

"We're all wanted there."

She glanced down at Opal's face, which was softer in the moonlight. "People don't know he's Francois Mond there."

"Oh, yes. I'd forgotten we were protecting the most notorious revolutionary that Faetta has ever known. Forgive my stupidity."

"Aren't you the man who murdered an old man, a priest, if I remember correctly, by burning him to death in a religious sanctuary?"

"Yes," he acknowledged quietly.

"And Opal is so much more terrible than that?"

He laughed, "How can you even make a comparison? He's the man who wanted to be a dictator—a bloody dictator—and killed everyone in his path to get his way. No, I don't compare. He's more bloodthirsty than the two of us combined."

"You sound like Edel."

Jules fixed her with a cold stare.

Cameo glanced down at the dandy without ever really seeing him. She was growing tired of hearing everyone come down so hard on Opal. After all, Francois Mond was a great man. He was trying to help the little people of the world. She wasn't quite certain why everyone was missing this point. Of course, she'd snapped. Jules probably didn't deserve it, though. Edel had treated him horribly, and now she was comparing him to the vampire who had smashed in his skull and nearly killed him. "I'm sorry," she said at last, her voice barely audible.

"The ice could break under our feet."

When she looked up at him, he seemed to be memorizing every detail carved on one of the stone coffins. The flowers carved into its surface. The eternal weeping willow.

"Yes."

"Why do they decorate coffins like that? They just push them in here and never see them again."

"The family probably visits."

He was dubious. "Sure they do."

"I don't know."

"Seems a shame to just create something so beautiful and then tuck it away for no one to ever see it again."

"Yeah. Well, I'm certain my grave will end up being a ditch somewhere, so no one will waste his time with all that art," she said as she rolled her eyes.

He didn't reply.

Cameo flipped open her pack and searched through it. If they were going to take a trip tonight, she might as well know what she had on hand, and that was pretty much nothing. Some tincture, a few bits of food items, a bottle of wine, Bel's two books. She sighed and looked up at Jules. His long, dark hair fell against his face and down his chest, hiding him.

"How are your wrists?"

His expression was suddenly hard. "If you're planning on leaving while it's still dark, we should go."

She hadn't meant to offend him but somehow that was exactly what she'd managed to do.
Oh, well.
She slung the pack over her shoulder and lifted Opal to his feet, dragging him outside.

He half stumbled.

"Wake up darling," she whispered, holding him against her.

"What's going on?"

"We're going to walk to Lockenwood."

"It's freezing out here..."

Cameo removed her cloak and wrapped him up in it.

The sky was clear and black, a few stars were twinkling, and the moon was waxing so there was enough light to see by. There was an uncomfortable foot of snow to slog through on their way to the edge of the sea, however.

"What time is it?"

"It must be midnight."

The three of them trudged down a steep hill, sliding part of the way, until they were at the shore of the Azez.

Jules took one step out onto the frozen sea. It was a thick, uneven layer of ice covered with snow that had seeped into it, making it crumbly and uncertain. A dusting of snow was dancing around them as Cameo and Opal stepped out onto the ice.

"This seems a bad idea," Opal concluded. He gazed out over the Azez and couldn't see land on the other side, just white without definition. "Won't your Master be waiting for you over there?"

Cameo searched his eyes, "It will be safer for you."

He took a tentative step forward, the frozen snow crunched beneath his weight but the ice held. "I hope you're right behind me."

She smiled. "It would be faster if I carried you."

Chapter Three

Kyrian saw a figure in the distance. She was standing in the center of town, beside the community well. He ran his hand through his hair, but it was nothing more than strands of ice from warming up in taverns and then going back out into the cold. He shook his hair, but it did no good; he just got pelted in the face with the little whips his hair had become.