Night of the Wolves (17 page)

A
LEX HAD GATHERED
B
ILL
and the boys in the kitchen, where she had Bill light the kerosene lamps and the gas stove, and she’d made hot chocolate. He had politely thanked her, but he seemed numb as he drank his hot chocolate.

Now he rummaged around until he found a bottle of whiskey he apparently kept hidden in a cabinet.

“I don’t understand—what are those men doing to my mom?” Jared demanded suddenly, breaking the silence.

“You’re old enough now to understand,” Bill said. “Your baby sister—she was…diseased. And she managed to give the disease to your mama. It’s vam-pire-ism, they said. Mr. Fox is trying to…to…”

“He’s going to kill her!” Jared exploded. “He’s going to kill my mother.”

Alex looked at Bill, then walked over and hunkered down by Jared’s chair. “Jared, you’re wrong. Cody is trying to help her, to get her back to being the woman she was, the one who loves you.”

“Hell, son,” Bill said, “your mama nearly ripped your throat out.”

Jared swallowed hard. “But she’s still my mama.”

Bill nodded and started pacing.

Suddenly, Cody appeared in the doorway. She thought he looked pale, and unsteady on his feet. How much blood could he give away in a matter of days and still survive himself?

“Cody?” she whispered.

She picked up a clean cup and filled it with hot chocolate, then handed it to him without a word.

“How’s Dolores?” Bill asked, his eyes filled with fear.

“She’s hanging in,” Cody said.

“Can the boys and I see her?” Bill asked.

Cody nodded. “For a few minutes. But…I’m sorry. Don’t untie her yet. We need to see if the treatment was successful.”

Bill nodded as the boys shoved past him, already running down the hall.

Cody waited until they were gone, then practically fell
into one of the chairs at the breakfast table, his legs stretched before him.

Alex took a seat across from him, watching him intently. “Is she going to be all right?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is there…is there really a possibility?”

“Yes,” he said, and offered her a half smile. But then his eyes grew serious. “If she
is
all right—same as this whole household—it’s thanks to you. How often do you have these…dreams, or visions or whatever they are?”

Alex shrugged uncomfortably. “Not often, though…more often lately. In the past, I’ve tried to use what I learn to help people, but discreetly. I wound up in trouble when I was living in Washington. Arrested, actually. Luckily, both the president and his wife seem to believe in dreams, so I made it back out here.”

“Abraham Lincoln is a good man. I feel sorry for Mary, though.”

He leaned toward her. “Alex, you have to tell me everything you see. That you dream. It’s crucial.”

She nodded. “I do tell you everything.”

“I’m not so certain. Alex, your father is out there somewhere.”

She shook her head passionately, needing him to believe her. “I refuse to believe that he’s a monster. Haven’t you ever heard of any one…having the disease and not becoming a killer? Ever? It’s got to be possible.”

He looked away so she couldn’t look in his eyes and see the thought running through his mind, a thought he wasn’t going to share with her. “Alex, there have been some unusual cases where a person hadn’t fully made the transition into being a vampire—that’s why we could save
April Snow, and why we may be able to save Dolores. But…your father was attacked weeks ago. We don’t know who killed him, but we do know that he was buried and he isn’t in his grave. Alex, you can’t take any chances, even if he comes looking for you. That’s a vampire’s strategy. Amy was able to lure her mother out because she knew her mother loved her. I’m afraid that your father will do the same thing, and that you won’t have the strength to fight him.”

She straightened in her chair, drawing away from him. “And
I’m
afraid that you won’t give me a chance to prove I’m right about my father. No one has ever seen him with Milo, you know.”

Cody lifted his hands. “We haven’t seen half of what Milo’s got yet. We haven’t found his lair. And he took down two whole towns, along with God only knows how many wagons and carriages and even wagon trains.”

“My father isn’t with him,” she insisted.

“Alex, this is what I know. We killed a good number of Milo’s men when they attacked Victory, but he
will
attack again. Right now he’s trying to get to people through trickery and seduction. Look at what happened with Dolores. If he could have turned her, she would have killed her whole family. Or maybe she would have turned the boys—they would make fine soldiers for his army. And he’s going to keep on doing the same thing, using whoever he can to infect the living. Then, when he’s weakened the town, when he has it on its knees, he’ll attack again. And this time he’ll feast, just like a king enjoying the spoils of war.”

Alex was about to reply when Brendan suddenly appeared in the doorway. “Cody, I think you need to come,” he said.

Cody rose immediately, and Alex followed him down the hallway to Dolores’s room.

The boys were curled up next to their mother on the bed, Bill Simpson on his knees by her side.

Dolores’s eyes were open again, and when she turned her gaze toward Cody, she seemed to be clear and rational, but when she spoke, her voice was filled with tension.

“They’re near…I can feel them,” she said.

“I don’t know what she’s talking about,” Bill said, looking at Cody with a worried expression.

“I do,” Cody said, crossing the room to the bed. “Come on, boys. We’ve got to get you and your mother someplace safe.”

“What?” Bill demanded.

“She can feel the vampires coming. We’ve got to get somewhere safe.”

“You have to untie her,” Bill said.

“Not yet,” Cody said firmly.

“But…we’re in danger!” Bill Simpson said.

“And there’s still a thread connecting her and the vampires. I’m sorry, but we can’t take any chances. Now, do you have a cellar? Anything underground with a good strong latch?”

“The storm cellar,” Bill said.

“We’ve got to get your wife down there, along with the boys,” Cody said.

“Okay, come on,” Bill agreed. “I’ll show you.”

They had to leave the house to reach the storm cellar. Alex shivered as they walked outside. The very tenor of the night had changed since their arrival.

The wind had picked up and almost seemed to moan.

She stood on the porch, feeling the air and looking up
at the sky. A streak of red crossed that dark, star-filled canvas, like a warning written in blood.

“Alex!” Cody shouted to her.

Suddenly the wolves started to howl, sharp and shrill, like a wail of anguish in the night.

“Alex!” Cody repeated more loudly.

She hurried toward the storm cellar, frowning. Brendan was already beside the horses, procuring their weapons. He had a row of stakes lined up against the balustrade of the front porch and was armed with two revolvers, along with a bow and arrows, and he had laid out additional bows and arrows for Cody—and one more fighter.

She reached Cody. He’d carried Dolores Simpson into the cellar, still tied up. The boys were down there with her. Bill was standing next to him, like a man caught in the midst of a situation he still couldn’t believe.

“You have to get down there,” Cody told her.

“No, I’m better off up here. I can fight—I fought them the other night.”

“Someone has to stay with Dolores,” Cody argued.

“She has her sons.”

“No. Milo still has influence over her through Amy, and they could be convinced to let her go,” Cody insisted.

“Send Bill down,” Alex argued.

“Bill will be just as vulnerable,” Cody said, his tone growing more forceful as the wind continued to rise and the wolves to howl.

“Someone needs to get the hell down there!” Brendan cried out. “I can see them coming now!”

“I won’t let her get to me, by God, I swear I won’t,” Bill Simpson declared. He was down the hatch and into the cellar in two seconds; the hatch closed, and they heard it lock.

Cody swore.

“Alex, get up on the porch—at least your back will be protected. Brendan, you go left, and I’ll take the right,” Cody commanded.

Alex saw the wisdom of his plan and raced to obey him. She saw that the two men were already taking aim, their arrows pointed toward heaven.

The sky…a deeper darkness was forming there. A darkness that moved, hiding the moon, whose light should have sifted down to illuminate the yard.

“Be ready. They’re close,” Cody said.

B
ILL
S
IMPSON HELD HIS
wife’s shoulders while the boys sat tensely, just feet away. He wished he could cover his ears against the howling of the wolves.

Suddenly, beneath him, Dolores began to move. She looked up at him, smiling, a coquettish look in her eyes.

“They’re coming, Bill. You have to let me go.”

He shook his head, instantly afraid.

“Oh, Bill. They can give us things you can’t imagine. Virility and youth. If you would just let me go, Bill, you would know. You would remember.”

He
did
remember. He enjoyed remembering the days when they were young, when they had kissed every chance they got. When they had first been intimate…. Somehow her words made him think back to hot nights, sweaty limbs and illicit ecstasy under the stars. They’d always intended marriage…but now he remembered, with a feeling of rather delicious wickedness, how they had dared to anticipate their vows.

“Dad?” Jared said worriedly.

Bill shook his head firmly. “It’s all right. We do as Cody said.”

“Cody!”

Dolores let out a cry of rage and rocked hard against him, baring her teeth, straining to reach him.

Bill drew back from her in horror.

He knew he had to do something, but he was frozen in horror, watching his wife twist and turn and convulse.

And seek to pierce him with teeth that had become fangs again.

“Dad!” Jared cried in horror.

Bill looked at his son. Amy was gone, and now the boys were seeing their mother turn into a monster.

“Forgive me, Dolores,” he whispered, then gave her a good upward punch to the jaw.

A sigh escaped her, and all the fight drained from her body as she lapsed into unconsciousness.

C
LOSER, CLOSER
…

The wolves fell suddenly silent as the shadows drew near.

The men were ready. They had taken aim.

Alex followed suit.

Cody’s arrow flew first. Seconds later, they heard a shriek in the night. Brendan fired off the next arrow, and Alex snapped into motion herself, nocking an arrow into place.

Another arrow sailed, followed by another thump and a scream, but Brendan’s next shot apparently missed its mark. Alex let her own arrow fly, and a
thing
fell to the ground and started crawling toward them. One of the others hit it again, at close range, and it lay still.

She saw with a shudder that the monster had once been a man.

A smell of decay rose as the thing flapped around for a few seconds, then dissolved into a putrid mass of blackened rot.

After that the night came alive with a mass of screaming shadows, wings flapping and arrows flying so fast that Alex no longer had any sense of which were hers, and which were Cody’s and Brendan’s. Then several of the creatures managed to alight.

Cody tossed aside his bow and arrow and reached for the sword hanging at his side, stepping out to meet them as they approached. His swing was powerful, dispatching heads and cleaving through torsos.

Alex caught sight of movement and shouted, “Brendan!”

One of the creatures was slithering through the darkness by his side, seemingly a shadow and nothing more, so stealthily did it move.

Brendan swung around to face it as he drew a stake from inside his jacket and drove it into the shadow, all in one smooth motion.

A second later, there was nothing to see of it but ash.

The wolves began howling again, a terrible sound that rang in evil harmony with the shrill screams that cleft the night.

Then, as if a mass of migrating birds had suddenly taken flight, she heard the sound of wings beating the air, rising high.

Flying away.

The yard was strewn with…ashes. Body parts. Corpses in various stages of decomposition.

The three of them stood dead still as sounds of battle began to fade.

A lone wolf howled, and then that sound, too, faded away.

At last Cody said, “It’s over. For tonight, at least.”