Night of the Vampires (10 page)

And as they moved into the darkness, something burst out from the altar area. A shadow, so fleeting that Cole had to ask himself if he'd really seen it. It was there, and then it wasn't. The door to the chapel swung open, from a massive gust of wind—or an unseen hand.

Cole reached into his pocket coldly for a stake and started for the door. Megan raced after him, grabbing his arm. “Cole, no!”

“It's out there—whatever, exactly, it is—it's out there,” he told her, trying to shake her off as he neared the outside.

“Cole! Wait, think! I told you—yesterday, there was something in the trees that fought alongside me. Whatever—whoever—this is, exactly, he, she,
it,
isn't out to hurt us. Cole! It was taking refuge inside a chapel!” she pleaded.

“If it's good, why doesn't it just join forces with us openly?” Cole demanded, yelling the words both at her and into the dark graveyard.

“I don't know,” she admitted. “But…don't. Please! It's not trying to harm us in any way, and it might be there to help us when we need help. I'm begging you, think about it!” Megan insisted.

He felt her hand on his arm, felt the tension in
his muscles, and something he wasn't accustomed to—uncertainty.

Her hand fell away. She studied him with her mesmerizing golden eyes.

“You don't trust me, and you can't allow yourself to trust in anything that I say,” she told him flatly.

He shook his head. “Megan, maybe it's watching us. Maybe it's waiting for us to be in a position of vulnerability. The old ones do that.”

She shook her head. “Sometimes, you know, you have to believe in what you can't see.”

He stared back at her, and slowly, the tension eased from his arms, and then the length of him. He wasn't sure he was giving in to her certainty that the shadow thing was
good,
a force of salvation.

But he was certain that they'd never catch it now. It knew that they would be looking for it.

“All right. The rain has stopped. Let's finish what we started,” Cole said.

She nodded. They headed out. Cole closed the chapel door behind them.

“West angle,” she said.

“All right. I'm on the east,” he agreed. She started to walk away.

“Hey!” he called to her.

She stopped and looked back at him.

“Make sure I can see you at all times,” he said.

She nodded slowly and then offered him a dry smile. “Is that because you're afraid for me? Or afraid of what I might do?”

“Yes. Both,” he told her huskily. He knew it was a lie. He knew that he was already entranced by the woman, even as he mistrusted her.

Was that her plan? Seduction and then…what?

He didn't think so.

Or he didn't want to think so.

He gave himself a mental shake and started on his route across the slick grass, mud patches—among the fresh-washed flowers, blooming in spring despite the pervasive atmosphere of death. He walked down a vacant patch of land where future decades of dead might one day lie, and he came upon a section where many graves had been dug.

He stopped. There was an area where the dirt had recently been dug up and then hastily replaced.

Cole hunkered down over the damp earth. He began to dig at it.

Quickly, he came to a corpse.

The corpse of a Union private, Irish Brigade.

A corpse with a fine-honed stake in its heart, one much like Cody had taught him to make.

Someone, determined to hold the “infection” at bay, had been there before them.

And yet, even then, he held on to doubt. A callous killer might not care how many of his or her own were dispatched—if there were a greater game afoot.

He rose. He kept walking the cemetery, but he knew there would be nothing further for him to do, nothing to fear.

Any fresh, newly made vampire who might have taken refuge in the cemetery was dead now in truth.

For good or evil, the shadow-being from the chapel had seen to it already.

 

M
ARTHA CLUCKED
around Megan like a mother hen when she and Cole returned to the boardinghouse. She
had to admit that it was rather nice. She was accustomed to taking care of herself, having spent the past years doing her best in horrible conditions. It was nice to have someone worried about her state of exhaustion, determined that she have a long bath and some good hot tea with whiskey and settle down before a nice fire.

She needed more than tea at that moment, but she was pretty sure her brother traveled with a sizable stash of the
sustenance
they needed to maintain their customary lives. And she could wait. It had been a long day, the break they had taken in the chapel the only rest they had, and nothing to eat at all.

She was feeling quite loved and appreciated, but Martha was just as concerned about Cole. The minute she was out of the tub, Martha arrived to get her dressed quickly, and requiring her assistance to empty the contents of the tub so that fresh water could be heated to fill the tub for Cole.

She knew he'd see it as a bit of a luxury. During her time with the army, she and the men had gone days—weeks—without a chance to find a spring, a creek, a river, or anywhere with water available for bathing. She had been luckier than the men, since she had ridden often enough with messages from one position to another, and she'd had the luxury of sometimes being in Richmond, in an officer's home, and even in the White House of the Confederacy. On those occasions, she had felt a little bit of guilt bathing, thinking on her comrades in the camps and the dirt that seemed to cling to them all permanently.

Megan eased back into the overstuffed wing chair Martha had placed her in, closing her eyes.

She couldn't really tell anyone the truth about her suspicions.

She was pretty sure that Cody thought their father might have been the one to breed the vampire clan that had ripped apart the towns surrounding Victory, Texas. The clan of “outlaws” that Cody, Cole and friends had put down.

But she didn't believe it. Their father had left his mother; he had supposedly been dead. But he had returned to the East to meet her mother, and he had never hurt her. Her mother had always insisted he was an honorable man, even if he had to live by different rules than society would accept.

But he was out there, still. She knew it. And she didn't believe that he was evil. He had to have been a decent man to have been with her mother. And her mother wasn't stupid; she would trust her opinion.

He stayed hidden, of course. Most likely, he would reside in one place, and then another, careful to keep moving so no one would ever really know him.

But Megan believed, with her whole heart, that he spent his days searching out and destroying those who came back with the hunger to kill.

She dreamed of meeting her father.

A noise at the door alerted her that someone had come to the house. She instantly tensed, but the door opened and Alex was there with Cody and Brendan.

“Hello,” Alex said. Her brow furrowed. “How was your day?”

“Fairly uneventful. We searched through Oak Hill, got caught in the rain, searched some more and came on back,” Megan said. “How was your day?”

Alex hesitated a moment. “Worrisome,” she said.

“I think a good supper would be in order round about now,” Brendan said, walking to the fire to warm his hands. The rain had made the spring day chilling to the bone.

“Yes, of course. You look exhausted,” Alex said to Megan.

“I
am
tired.”

“Where is Cole?” Cody asked.

“Enjoying a bath,” Megan said.

“We mustn't forget, Lisette Annalise needs to see him tomorrow,” Brendan reminded Cody.

“We certainly won't forget that,” Cody said.

“Well,” Alex murmured. “I'll go see about a meal.”

Alex went out. Megan looked at Cody, who seemed perplexed.

“What's wrong?” she asked him. She was disturbed not only that they had apparently been out on a secret mission all day, but that their mission seemed to concern Lisette Annalise.

It was ridiculous, but she didn't like the woman.

Was it jealousy?
she wondered. She eschewed the idea. She and Cole made good partners, that was all. Even if the man still didn't trust her. She couldn't care in the least about his outside activities.

Cody glanced over at her. He looked at her for a moment and then said, “It's spreading. The outbreak is spreading.”

“What happened? Where?”

Again, Cody hesitated. “We're—we're really not sure…. But we suspect that there are—creatures—in Harpers Ferry.”

Megan stood up, aggravated and done with the way they all looked at her. “Look, I don't know what you're
hiding, and I don't know why you mistrust me so much. You're all able to say that you do this—and you're not a part of the war. Well, at this point, I'm not a part of the war, either. So, as much as I have wanted all my life to meet you, to get to know you, Cody, I'm done. I'll go back to handling the situation in my way, as I see fit.”

“Wait!”

Alex had come back into the room. She looked around at all of them. “Look, we're playing on a tightrope of belief and disbelief—and war—all the time. But, Cody, I think that this is getting ridiculous. What? Do you think that Megan is really trying to spread the disease, and she's just with us to find out what we know? Or do you think she's here to ask the vampires she's about to slay if they know any Federal secrets? Please. We're sleeping with her in the house—we're trusting her with our lives as it is. And she's done nothing to betray that trust. I'll tell her the truth, if you won't.”

“Alex—” Brendan began to protest.

Alex cut him off with the wave of a hand. “It's my—it's actually my relationship to begin with. It's my right to tell Megan what I choose.” She turned to Megan. “I think I mentioned that
I
was actually taken in once—with a canvas bag over my head, at that—on suspicion of spying. Because I have dreams, and the dreams sometimes foretell the future. Well, when I was in prison, I was visited by someone else who has dreams.”

“Who?” Megan asked.

“Didn't I tell you? President Lincoln. He has seen terrible things happening in Harpers Ferry. Things that go beyond the scope of the town changing hands every other month in this war.”

Megan stared at Alex, frowning. In 1859, John Brown
had attempted a seizure of the arsenal there, taken the armory, lost most of his men and been captured at the town's firehouse—the “fort” he had been using. Now the raid was famous—or infamous, depending on whose side one was on. She didn't feel a tremendous amount of sympathy for John Brown, though he was a hero in the Union. She didn't dislike him because of his determination that slavery be abolished, but because he had thought that any means justified the end he wanted—he had committed cold-blooded murder in his quest. It now seemed an odd piece of history: Robert E. Lee and Jeb Stuart, two of the South's most brilliant generals, had been charged by the Union government with putting down the raid and the violence. John Brown had been hanged at Charles Town, south of the border region at the junction of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers, a town the Union only took recently.

Megan shook her head. “I thought that now the Union army was firmly entrenched at Harpers Ferry.”

“It is. And there are Confederate soldiers being held there, as well. It's a political hotbed at the moment. The area, you know, is no longer part of the Confederacy—or the Commonwealth of Virginia—it was admitted to the Union as the thirty-fifth state on June twentieth, 1863. It's now part of the state of West Virginia,” Brendan said, still staring at the fire. “I don't know if you're aware of this, but when the vote was taken for secession in the Virginia legislature, most of the northwestern counties voted against seceding. The Southern forces still keep attacking. You never know who might be who down there—who might be in control, who might be a prisoner.”

“But right now, it's West Virginia, and the Union is in control, right? And so—we're going to Harpers Ferry?”
Megan asked. “But what about the capital? This capital—Washington, D.C.? What about here? Isn't the president worried about what may be happening here?”

“Yes,” Cody said.

“I'm lost,” Megan admitted.

“We'll detail the strategy tomorrow. It may mean splitting up,” Cody said. He added a hasty, “Tomorrow!” in a whisper.

Megan quickly realized why. Martha had come in. “I've had a ham shank basting throughout the day. I'll bring it on in, if I may, and if I may rely upon you all for a bit of help?”

“Of course! And get the kids—we'll all eat!” Megan said quickly. She stood up and, with the others, followed Martha.

When they were settled in, it looked like quite a feast to Megan, again having to push images of past Southern comrades, most likely hungry and tired at this hour, out of her mind. Artie and Marni were charming children; Artie, determined to be a man of the house at age twelve, and Marni, a little lady at seven. They had helped bring in the food, Artie peppering Cole with questions about being sheriff in the frontier.

“I would like to grow up to be a sheriff—and see the West!” Artie said as he excitedly ate.

“It's a vast place,” Cole told him.

“Yes, but I would like to live there. I would like to ride horses every day, and I would very much like to bring bad men to jail and justice,” Artie said.

“You should stay right here and perhaps study medicine, like Cody,” Martha said.

Artie had solemn eyes. “I don't want to be in a world
where we're all fighting all the time. I want to go West, where I'd be looking for men who committed crimes, and not soldiers who do what they're told.”