Vampire Seeker (20 page)

“A hound of God,” he whispered, his voice raw and dry. “Werewolves, dear Sammy, we’re werewolves.”

I raced across the Darkened room to the door. I needed to get out – to tell Drake that there were werewolves on the
train. Louise gripped my arm as I frantically twisted the door handle.

“I have the key and your guns, remember?” she whispered in my ear.

Wheeling around, I looked at her in the gloom and said, “So you’re a wolf, too?”

“No,” she said. “I’m very human.”

“But you’ve been…you know…sleeping with the preacher,” I said. Then, suddenly a thought hit me like
a punch to the face and I gasped, “Oh, my God! I’ve made love to a werewolf!”

“We had sex,” Harry said from the darkness, his voice deeper but dark and smooth sounding.

“Whatever it was, it wasn’t normal –
natural!
” I cried.

“Thanks,” Harry said back.

“I don’t believe this is happening to me,” I cried, slapping my temples with the flat of my hands. “C’mon,
Sammy wake up! You can do it – just think of home. Think of that train and you’ll wake up and those cops will
come and save you!”

“Are you okay?” I heard someone ask, and it was Zoe’s voice that I could hear.

“No, I’m not fucking okay!” I shouted at her black form. Then, pulling free of Louise’s hold I raced
across the room to the curtains. I gripped them and just as I was going to flood the carriage with light so I could see them,
the preacher spoke up.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

“And give me one good reason why not,” I snapped, my hands poised.

“Because you will kill us,” Harry said, and I could feel him standing behind me. “We’re not a danger
to you now. We’re in the final stages of changing back to our human form, but we need another hour or two of darkness.
That’s why the preacher looks like does – like we all do, because we were caught out in light before we had changed
back. The sun could still kill us. You don’t want that do you, Sammy?” and I felt his hand – claw –
paw – whatever, gently squeeze my shoulder.

I let the curtains slide through my fingers, and shrugging his hand away from me, I stepped back from him.

“Thank you,” he said, his outline huge and powerful-looking in the dark.

“I thought it was only vampires who couldn’t go around in the sun?” I said, still feeling angry, confused,
and hurt.

“Both creatures are just two different sides of the same dark coin,” the preacher spoke up. “We are very
similar. But there are differences.”

“And what might they be?” I quipped. “Vampires like ripping the throats out of innocent people, and you
howl at the moon and take a leak up a tree?”

“Something like that,” the preacher said. “But I don’t ever remember taking a leak against a tree.
You’re going to have to forget any preconceived ideas that you may or may not have about werewolves, Sammy.”

“I don’t have to do anything,” I hissed at him.

“If you’re going to tag along with our pack then you need to listen to the preacher,” Zoe said softly. I
wished that I could see her, but then again, did I really want to? If she looked anything like the preacher had, then I was
pretty sure that I didn’t want to see her.

“I’m not planning on hanging around with any pack,” I snapped at her. “I just want to go home. Back
to London. Back to twenty…”

“But we need you,” Louise said from behind me. “We were hoping…I was hoping that you might help me.”

“With what, exactly?” I said into the darkness.

“I watch the preacher, Harry, and Zoe while they are wolves – take care of them, if you like. That’s where
you saw me returning from the other night in Black Water Gap. During a full moon, the preacher and the others fully change,
become savage, just like wild wolves. So I keep them chained – locked up – so they can’t harm anyone. It
was the blood of a deer that you saw me wash from my hands that night. I kill for them when they are changed to satisfy their
hunger and bloodlust.”

“I still don’t see how I can help you?” I said, still not truly believing what I was hearing.

“They can use their powers of speed, strength, and their appearance can even change a little at any time. But during
a full moon, when they are fully transformed, they become cunning and will do and say anything to be free of the shackles
they willingly put on before their change. But once wolves, they will tell you anything, plead with you, beg you, trick you
into setting them free. Sometimes the full moon can last three or more nights, and to stay awake for so long can weaken my
resolve. It is easy when you are so tired to become weak and believe the lies and the tricks they will tell you to be set
free.”

“If it’s such a drain on you, why haven’t you hired some help before?” I asked. “Although I’d
love to read the role requirements for that job. I can only begin to imagine what the interview for the post would be like.”

“There was another,” the preacher said. “Her name was Marley Cooper.”

I glanced down at Zoe, and although I could only see her rough outline in the dark, I said, “I remember you mentioning
Marley, and Drake thought I was her when we first met in the saloon. Who was she?”

“She was my friend,” Louise spoke up. “She watched the Skinturners through the long nights with me. We would
sit together as they begged and pleaded to be released.”

“So what happened to her?” I insisted.

There was silence in the darkness, and the only sound I could hear was my own heartbeat pounding in my chest.

“I killed her,” Harry suddenly said, his voice calm.

“You killed her?” I gasped in disbelief, knowing that I had made love to him –
had
sex
with him. I mustn’t get that confused, or I might soon be dead.

“I had good reason,” Harry said, his voice deep.

“What good reason could you possibly have for killing someone?” I snapped at him, feeling even more angry and
confused than I had before.

“The same reasons you had for killing those five men and those vampires last night,” he reminded me. “You
did it for the same reason that I killed Marley – you did it to survive.”

“What threat could a woman have been to a werewolf?” I seethed.

“She loved me…” he started.

“Oh well, there you go then!” I sighed. “God forbid any woman who goes and falls in love with the great
Harry Turner.”

“Be quiet,” he boomed. “You don’t understand. I loved Marley Cooper - yes I was in love with her.
But she wanted more than I was prepared to give.”

“Don’t tell me,” I sneered, “She asked you to say the magic ‘L’ word?”

“She wanted me to bite her,” Harry said. “She wanted me to change her – she wanted to be like us.
Marley wanted to be a wolf. I tried to tell her it was a curse on one’s soul. Being a Turnskin is a nightmare that I
have to live with every day. I didn’t want that for her. But Marley believed that if I truly loved her, then I would
change her. So when I refused time and time again, she grew bitter and resentful. Unless I am beheaded, speared through the
heart with a silver sword, or bitten by a vampire, then I am immortal – we all are. But she wanted the strength and
the power that we have. She wanted to live forever. But I didn’t care for that. Marley believed that immortally was
a gift – but it isn’t. It’s a curse, I tell you.”

“If your life is such a nightmare, why didn’t you just kill yourself instead of her?” I spat.

“We can’t kill ourselves – not intentionally. And we can’t kill each other, as we have all come from
the same bite, the same bloodline,” Harry explained, and the others sat quietly while he told his story. “So,
Marley’s love for me turned to mistrust, spite, and jealousy. Unbeknown to us, she struck a deal with the vampires.
In exchange for the location of where we would hide during our next change, knowing that we would be chained and defenceless,
she would receive the immortality that she craved so much, from a vampire bite.”

“How did you find out about this betrayal?” I asked him, moving slightly in the dark, trying to get a glimpse
of him as a wolfman.

“That day, the day the preacher found you in the desert and brought you back to camp – you were unconscious. Zoe
discovered Marley throwing away a crucifix, a bottle of holy water, and some cloves of garlic, which she had found in your
coat pocket. Now why would she have wanted to get rid of the very articles that would protect us from our enemies? That night
as you lay unconscious in the wagon, and we had been chained up, Louise saw the vampires coming across the plain,” Harry
explained. “We had been chained up for three nights, the moon going through a particularly slow cycle. For hours Louise
had listened to our howling, begging, and empty promises, so she took a break and walked away from the camp. It was then she
saw the vampires coming on their wild black horses. Louise rushed back and told Marley what she had seen. Marley told her
what she had done, and that it was too late for me and the others, but not for her. Louise begged Marley for the keys to our
chains so we could be released, even if it meant her own certain death.

“But Marley wouldn’t hand over the keys, and told her to run and run and run. Unbeknown to Marley, I had overheard
her and Louise’s heated argument. So knowing that we had been tricked, I told Marley that if she unchained me, I would
bite her - not kill her – just bite her so she could become like me. Believing that her prayers had been answered, she
hurriedly unchained me…”

“And you killed her,” I finished for him.

“Yes,” he whispered. “Or spend the rest of my life sleeping with one eye open. I knew I could never trust
her again.”

“As I told you once before, Sammy, the Lord gives you what you need, not what you ask for,” the preacher said.

“So Marley needed to die?” I shot back.

“She was dead either way,” the preacher came back at me. “If Harry hadn’t killed her – the vampires
would of, then us, too.”

“But the vampires promised to give her eternal life,” I said.

“There is only one who can give that,” the preacher whispered. “What the vampires offered Marley, and what
she so wanted from Harry, isn’t eternal life – it’s a living hell. You are nothing more than the walking
dead, feeding off the living, and damning your soul forever. She would have never been given eternal life if she had chosen
that path.”

“So what about the women you’ve been killing?” I said, looking at his dark shape slumped in the armchair.
“You’ve been doing them a favour too, I guess?”

“What women?” the preacher asked me, his voice barely above a whisper.

“The women that Drake believes you have murdered.”

“Why would he say something like that?” he asked, a dry chuckle in the back of his throat.

“Because he believes you’re Jack the Ripper,” I told him.

An eerie silence fell over the carriage, and apart from the sound of my own heart racing in my chest, all I could hear was
the sound of the wind howling down off the mountains and buffeting the side of the train. Just as the silence became almost
unbearable, the preacher spoke.

“Now why would Drake think that I was this Jack the Ripper? What does some rich mining tycoon know about me?”

“Well that’s the real trick,” I said, wondering how much I should tell him about what I had learnt from
Drake. But in my heart I wanted to tell the preacher. However scared I felt at being in the presence of werewolves, none of
them had hurt me. They’d all had plenty of opportunities to kill me or make me one of them, but they hadn’t. So
drawing a deep breath, I said, “Drake isn’t a miner, he’s a police officer. He works for Scotland Yard.
The doctor who travels with him is a police surgeon, and together, they are hunting The Ripper.”

“Who they happen to believe is me,” the preacher said, and although I couldn’t see his face, he sounded
amused by this.

“Yes,” I nodded, staring into the darkness at his outline. “There was a murder in a town called Crows -”

“Ranch,” the preacher finished for me. “I also read the newspapers, Sammy. And as we also now know, there
was another in Black Water Gap, and one shortly after we arrived in Silent Rest. I can see why this lawman might suspect me.
I have recently been in all three locations. But I have three others who will provide me with an alibi.”

I knew he was referring to Harry, Zoe, and Louise, so I said, “Drake thinks the others are your accomplices.”

“They were chained up on the night of those murders,” Louise said, coming to stand beside the table with the low-burning
lamp on it.

Her pale, tired face looked haunted in the light. “But you weren’t,” I whispered.

“So you think I’m the killer now?” she sighed with frustration.

“No,” I breathed shaking my head, “Unless, you’ve been to London lately.”

“Ah, yes,” the preacher said, “Isn’t this Jack the Ripper the man you were chasing through London
Town? The man that you told us strangled you and then you miraculously woke up here?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Then unless I’ve grown a pair of wings and flown from one side of the world to the other, then it couldn’t
have been me or any one of us,” the preacher said.

“Drake believes that it was you I was chasing, it was you who half strangled me, and you brought me here as your prisoner,”
I said.

“Tell us, does Drake also believe that the moon is made of cheese?” Harry said in that low, smooth voice.

Zoe giggled from within the darkness.

I knew he was mocking me for even believing Drake’s theories. Then Harry’s voice turned harsh as I saw his large
frame move across the room towards me. “How do we know you’re not the killer?”

“What?” I gasped. “That’s nonsense.”

“Is it?” Harry said, his voice now sounding like a growl. “It is you who have recently come from London
where you claim to have chased this killer onto a train. It is you who the preacher found alone in the desert, claiming that
you had lost your memory. You were left alone in the town of Black Water Gap while we were shackled and being watched by Louise.
You arrived in Silent Rest just like the rest of us, and none of us saw you until dusk.”