I Travel by Night (8 page)

Lawson slept in his root cellar prison, and awakened, and slept. He was aware of figures hovering around him, curious at his progress from human into one of them. He was aware of the woman in red over him, and her face contorting as she opened her mouth wide and wider still and the curved fangs slid out.

“Gonna be turned soon,” said Nibbett, sitting next to the pallid captain on one of his many visits. “Two or three more times oughta do it. Drink you down to nothin’ so’s you can be filled up again. Feel them fangs start to grow, they’ll just slide out when you need ’em. Then we’ll take you huntin’. Lots of good game ’round here, the two-legged kind. You go in so fast, they never know what hits ’em. You’ll learn, Cap’n. Then you’ll see what it’s like to be one of us, and you’ll know them revelations.”

Trevor Lawson had looked up into Nibbett’s face, there in the light of the single candle, and forced the words from his bleached lips. “Human. Will I…ever be human again?”

“Not a blood-puppet no more, no. Not after you’re full turned.” Nibbett had frowned. “Well…there’s a way, I hear…but you won’t want to. After you feel and see and you
are
, you won’t care to go back. Only way…is to drink the ichor from the one who’s turned you. Drink it all down. Then you go back to what you were, and you
age
. Hell, some of ’em would turn to dust, if that was to happen. Ain’t gonna be a thought in your head though. All that goes away. You’ll see. Trust an ol’ rebel, Cap’n. Once you get turned…you ain’t ever gonna want to go back.”

Lawson came back from memory, and from sleep. He felt the sun sinking, felt the world cooling toward night. His time. When he winnowed out of the black curtains he found Ann Kingsley still in her boat, which she’d also roped to a cypress. She was bleary-eyed and bug-bitten, had obviously also been sleeping, and she held her pistol on him.

The sun was almost gone. The stars were coming out, and the night creatures of the swamp were awakening. Lawson removed his dark-tinted goggles. He stretched his body and removed himself from the rest of his protective shroud.

“I’m ready,” he said. “Can you keep up with me?”

“I can.”

He doubted it, but they didn’t have very far to go, according to McGuire’s map. The torch had burned itself out; no need to relight it, because they knew he was coming. “All right,” he told her, as he got the rope free and pulled it back into his skiff. He took up the oars. “Follow me.”

Into what? he wondered. Certain destruction? What was he going to do about her? Cast his Eye and make her go back? It wasn’t that simple. The spell didn’t last that long, and not over distance. He was responsible for her life now too, it seemed.

“Interesting choice of a career for yourself,” he told her. “How did the daughter of a wealthy politician become a trick shot artist working for Remington?”

“I’ve always been a good shot,” she answered after a short pause. “I wasn’t raised to be fancy. I was raised to take care of myself, and to be…quick to act and determined, when I have to be. Which is why I’m here. Also, I suppose…I like challenges.”

Lawson thought, as he rowed ahead of her and she followed, that he owed her something. She had come this far and she was ready to fight for the life of her sister, but she didn’t know what she was getting into. Maybe it was time to break his silence and tell her.

He let the boat drift until she caught up beside him. The sickle moon was rising over the treetops, and the branches of trees reached out on all sides over the water. The drone of the swamp had just begun.

Lawson paused to light a cigar. He blew a plume of smoke, and through it he said, “For your information, and it will certainly be a challenge to your belief…I am a vampire, Miss Kingsley, and you are following me into the world of the Dark Society.”

Miss Kingsley said nothing. The water hissed around her oars.

“A vampire,” Lawson repeated. “Do you know what that is? A creature no longer human? Well, in my case…partly so. I am hanging on to what I was, as hard as I can. That means drinking animal blood instead of human blood. I can’t digest very much else. I can’t bear very much sunlight, which is why I sleep during the day protected in my shroud. I am between worlds, let us say. Are you still with me?”

Miss Kingsley still said nothing. Both their boats drifted under the horned moon.

“I was wounded on the battlefield at Shiloh on the sixth of April, 1862,” Lawson went on, easily, as if he were talking about the smells of wild honeysuckle or the muck of the mire. “A feast of vampires caught me. I was taken to where they lived.
Existed
,” he corrected. “A female who called herself LaRouge turned me into one of them, over a period of time. I found out from one of the others that if you can drain the ichor—the vampiric fluid—from the creature who turned you, you may become human again. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know. He didn’t either. When they took me out hunting the first time, I had to kill one of them to get away. His name was Nibbett, and I cut his head off with a butcher knife in a farmhouse. It was not a pretty scene. They came after me, of course. They were
fast
. But I was desperate, and I was determined, and I jumped from a bridge into a river and I was gone. After that…a horror story. A story of a hungry creature, in agony at what he was becoming. Then he became a starving creature, until he began to rip the throats out of cattle and swine from farm to farm. That will keep you alive, he found out, but you begin to weaken without the human blood. You begin to…dwindle. But Nibbett was right about the revelations.” Lawson looked up beyond the treetops at the stars, and saw them blue and burning and beautiful as no human eye could ever behold. He saw the swirls of the evening breeze like the cool green phosphoresence of ocean waves. He saw the azure shine of the eyes of animals peering back at him from the underbrush on either side of the channel, and looking into the face of Ann Kingsley in the moon-touched dark he could see her as clearly as if the lamp of the heavens was turned directly upon her expression of combined solemnity and incredulity.

“I have become an adventurer for my livelihood,” Lawson continued. “I will go where I am summoned, and do the task I am asked to do, for payment. I choose who I will work for, and why. It all becomes night work, eventually. I have hunted and brought to bay the killers of a judge in Texas. I have bested a gunfighter in Wyoming who terrorized a town for extortion money. I have tracked three escaped convicts and their hostages through the snow in North Dakota. I have brought a cunning fox of a blackmailer to justice in San Francisco, and in Chicago I put an end to a maniac who lured young women and rewarded their love with a razor blade. And in all that time and in those places and many more, I looked for signs of the Dark Society’s presence. I searched for news of the drained bodies they would leave behind, and I searched the places I thought they might be hiding. Several times I found them by following their trails, and we had our battles. I’ve killed quite a few, and they’ve nearly killed me. By then they knew what I wanted. Once—last March in Kansas City—I even found LaRouge. She was cleaned-up and quite beautiful. I got close enough in a saloon to touch her, and she looked into my face with fear. Her horde closed in on me and tried to tear me to pieces. I had to get away for my life…such as it is. But she fears me because she knows what I desire, and that I won’t give up. And she is right.” Lawson punctuated this with a slow spool of smoke and a tense smile through it. “So this Christian Melchoir has taken your sister on the command of LaRouge,” Lawson said. “To bring me to them, in a place they control. They knew I would have to come, because
she
might be there.” He regarded the cigar’s burning tip. “If she might be there…any chance at all…I have to risk the trap. And it
will
be a trap, Miss Kingsley. Your sister may not be fully human any longer. She may have been turned. Oh…and the six hundred and sixty six dollars in gold coins?” Lawson tapped one of the saddlebags with a boot. “The Number of the Beast in the Book Of Revelations. I suppose that in their opinion,
I
am the Beast. The traitor who wishes to destroy them…so it’s fitting they should demand I bring that amount into their midst. They have little need for the gold; they want me…my ichor, my flesh, my bones, my body ripped into a hundred thousand pieces and scattered to burn in the noonday sun.” He slid the cigar back into his mouth and sat staring at Ann without expression. “I’m sure you have questions,” he said.

Ann Kingsley lifted her pistol, cocked it and took aim at Lawson’s head. Her eyes had become very wide.

Lawson smoked his cigar with his shrinking lungs and calmly surveyed the scene. “Do you know,” he said, “why I have two guns?”

She didn’t reply. Her hand was shaking, just a little bit.

“The Colt on the right with the rosewood grip is to defend myself against humans. It’s usually loaded with regular lead slugs. But this Colt on my left, with the grip of bone…is to defend myself against my own breed. It’s loaded with bullets of pure silver, blessed with holy water by a priest friend of mine. The effect of this bullet, fired into a vampire’s skull, is to burn the creature’s body and reduce it to a fine ash. Why this works, I do not know, but my friend wished me to use it due to some experiences he had.” Lawson shrugged. “I can tell you that it works very well. Before I left St. Benadicta I loaded both .44s with the silver bullets. I also carry a derringer with the same silver-and-holy-water slugs. Again…it works. And thankful I am that it does, because I would likely be dead by now.” He tapped ashes into the water, as both his boat and Ann’s drifted southward with a slow current. “
Fully
dead,” he added. “That is not my plan.”

Ann Kingsley spoke. Her voice sounded ravaged.

“You are insane,” she said.

Lawson answered, “The lead bullets from your .44 won’t kill them, but they don’t like to be wounded or have a bone broken. It hurts them, for a short time. Human blood helps them regenerate any injury. Except a severed arm or leg,” he added, thinking of Nibbett. Though if Nibbett had lived long enough and drank enough of the human elixir, even those might have regrown in some misshapen form or fashion. “I carry extra silver bullets in my holster and in my saddlebags. I’ll give you some, if you like.”

“Madness,” Ann whispered.

Lawson sensed it before it happened. Something was out there, about shoulder-high, over the channel. He put his hand out and touched the rusted chain that hung from tree-to-tree. Then the bells hidden in the trees rang. There were about six of them, a couple small and high-pitched, the others more of a funeral tone. The sound of the bells echoed off along the passage.

Lawson lifted the chain over his head so both his skiff and Ann’s could glide under. “We’ve just announced ourselves,” he said quietly. “What I’ve told you is the truth. The Dark Society is the underworld of vampires and…other creatures. They have existed for a very long time. You should go back, Ann. Leave this to me.” He paused, hoping for a breakthrough. “What’s your decision?”

She didn’t answer for a few seconds. Lawson thought she may have lost her voice. Then: “I’m going to save my sister, and you may be insane but I am not.”

“All right.” Lawson let the chain drop when Ann’s skiff had cleared it. They continued to drift. He considered showing her his fangs. In truth, the warm blood smell of her was working on him. Best to keep the fangs in their sockets, he decided. If she wanted to go into what was ahead…so be it.

“Row,” he told her, as he picked up his oars and began. She put her pistol aside, and followed him.

In another few minutes they heard distant music.

It was the music of fiddles and cellos, punctuated by the rattle and bang of tambourines. It was coming from around the next bend, where willow trees drooped into the water and cypress roots thrust from the muddy earth. Lawson kept rowing, and to her credit the young woman did not falter. “I believe we’ve reached Nocturne,” Lawson said, as they rounded the bend and saw what lay before them.

The upper floors of what must have been magnificent mansions loomed from the swamp. Gabled roofs were covered with moss and thick stone columns descended into the mire. The high steeple of a church stood beyond these structures, crooked like a dunce’s cap that had been knocked awry. At its summit was a Cross that seemed to be about to fall from its prominence into the despair at its bottom. Dark and glassless windows observed the world. Yet not all the windows of these mansions were dark. One that showed two floors above the surface of hundreds of waterlillies was lighted by candles, and it was from this remnant of Nocturne’s glory that the music wafted. Like the church steeple, the house itself was a little crooked, as if it had shifted on its uncertain foundations. Cracks in the lichen-blotched walls had been filled in by thick vines that might well be holding the house together. Several boats, including a larger vessel that looked like some kind of logger’s workcraft with a barracks aboard, were roped to the mansion’s columns. It occurred to Lawson that there was probably some swamp town other than St. Benadicta the vampires had come through, to get these boats and spirit Eva Kingsley down. Most likely they had feasted on the inhabitants of that town and either left it for the vultures or turned whomever it pleased them to.

It was merry music. The Dark Society was having a party this night.

He suspected he would be the guest of honor, and also the party favor.

He heard Ann give a quiet gasp, and he thought that she was beginning to realize what realm she had indeed entered.

“I’ll take those bullets,” she said.

Lawson opened one of his saddlebags, got out the box of silver slugs that Father Deale procured for him from a bullet maker in West New Orleans, and gave Ann a handful. He winced slightly. “Starting to burn my fingers,” he explained. Ann quickly unloaded her lead slugs and replaced them with the deadly silver angels. The remainder went into the ammo loops of her holster.

“Not that I believe you,” she told him. “I’m not saying that.”

“Of course,” he replied. He began rowing again and she followed. He aimed his boat through the mass of waterlillies toward the candlelit mansion, and now he saw that the way in was through a large window of the second floor. Part of it had been broken away to allow the entrance of more small boats, which were moored within. Candlelight from a huge overhead chandelier glinted off the water that had flooded the house, and Lawson saw upon the walls the dark stains and patterns of rot. A staircase led up from the murky depths to the floor above. The music was bright and festive. Figures passed by the windows of the third floor, some holding burning tapers.

Lawson rowed his skiff through the opening into the diseased mansion, and after a short hesitation to confirm her courage the young woman rowed in after him.

Lawson looked up the staircase. It opened into a larger chamber above. He took his saddlebags, got out of his boat and stepped onto the nearest and dryest riser, which sagged under his weight. He helped Ann out. They stood on the rotten stairs peering up. Ann’s Remington was gripped in her hand. Lawson was ready to draw a pistol at any second.

A figure holding a double-wicked candleabra came through the doorway and stood at the top of the stairs. It was a girl maybe sixteen or seventeen years old—at least in appearance…wearing a moldy green gown. She had long blonde hair and an attractive oval face and she smiled at them as if they were precious to her. “Come up!” she urged. “Oh, do come up!”

Lawson spent a moment tying their boats to the bannister. He felt Ann shiver at his side. He looked into her face and felt the warmth of her blood pulling at him; he could almost hear her heartbeat, and the rush of the delicious fluid through her veins. “Listen to me,” he said tersely. “Stay beside me. If one gets too close, shoot it in the head…whatever it looks like: man, woman or child.”

“Ya’ll come on up here this
instant
!” said the young girl, with a born-to-the-plantation petulance. And then, to whomever was beyond the chamber’s entrance: “He’s brought us a pretty!”

“Oh…my God…” Ann whispered.

Too late for that, Lawson thought. Way damned too late.

For the vampire gunslinger and his pretty, it was time to join the party. He started up the rotten staircase, which trembled beneath him. Ann got herself moving, and together they ascended toward the gathering.