Blood Marriage (41 page)

"Wise choice." The doctor slid his hands up and down the chains draped about his neck. They slithered like silent silver serpents. "Sure it didn't follow and make a meal of him? We'd need to find the body."

Devlin shook his head. "Randall's tracks go one direction. The tracks made by the train of a gown go the other. But we do need to hurry. Amelia's body is headed for the village."

Chapter Forty-Three

The oil drops marking the trail Amelia's body traveled had become infrequent, but the brush of the wedding gown across the ground was easy enough to follow. Nicholas set a pace that left the portly detective puffing and wheezing. There was no time to coddle the man. 

The
diavol
was awake and free of its bonds. They had to find it before it tasted first blood, both for the potential victim's sake and their own. Once the creature tasted blood, its transition to
diavol varcolac
would be complete. It would gain full use of its vampire powers and destroying it would become much more difficult. Even finding it would present a challenge, since there would be no trail to follow. No footprints. No brush of dress against ground. A demon vampire left no easy evidence of its passing.

"Damn it! Put me down!" 

Nicholas glanced back. Bergen had tossed Fielding across his shoulder. The detective's chunky bottom bobbed up and down, speckled with the tree-filtered light of the waning moon. Despite the added burden, Bergen wove swiftly through the trees, leaving no footprint in the soft earth.

That trick of complete weightlessness was not one Nicholas had been fully gifted with. Though if he concentrated, he could produce enough lightness to make following him no easy thing. But tonight they were the hunters, not the hunted, and there was no reason to waste time or energy covering his tracks. 

Trees gave way abruptly to open fields. Nicholas paused on the rise overlooking the village. Bergen set Fielding down. The detective straightened his clothing with agitated dignity. Below, the village graveyard sloped down to the church. Its thatched roof and stone bell tower looked tranquil beneath the night sky. A faint glow shone from its mullioned windows, as if the vicar had forgotten to extinguish a candle. Just beyond the church, the vicar's own cottage was dark, the windows shuttered. Nor did any light shine from the houses and businesses that lined the village's single wide lane. All were sealed fast against the night.

Whatever story Lennie told had worked. Even the few animals normally left in outdoor pens were conspicuously missing, probably locked away securely in barns. Nothing moved. Even the night breeze seemed to have been hushed by the nervous caution of the villagers.

"See it?" Bergen asked.

Nicholas nodded, acknowledging the unnatural flicker of shadow against the trunk of a mature oak tree growing alongside the church. 

"See what?" Fielding asked.

Nicholas was moving too fast to answer. Forsaking stealth, he and Bergen sprinted through the graveyard. Only one thing would drive a
diavol
to lurk about a church. There was blood nearby.

Bergen reached the oak first, Nicholas only a step behind. They circled the tree and searched the shrubs that marched parallel to the church's foundation, but whatever had been there was gone. With a jerk of his head, Bergen signaled he'd go around the back of the building and Nicholas should take the front. 

Fielding trotted out of the graveyard. Nicholas put a warning finger to his lips, then wordlessly motioned for Fielding to follow Bergen. 

Nicholas rounded the corner to the front lawn of the church and stopped short. A dark trail led from the street to the church entrance. Bloody fingerprints stood out in grotesque contrast against the white doors. Whoever was bleeding must have had the wisdom, or the simple good luck, to seek refuge in the one place the
diavol
wouldn't follow. 

Nicholas opened the church door. A fist slammed into his face sending him staggering backwards.

"Damn!" The word was followed by a string of expletives produced with a soldier's casual proficiency. Huge fists wrapped Nicholas's lapels and jerked him inside. The door slammed shut behind him.

"Shouldn't creep up on a man like that," Lennie said. The runner's face was grim with regret.

Nicholas looked down at the man's knuckles where they still gripped his lapels. They were covered in blood. Too much blood to be Nicholas's own and Lennie seemed uninjured.

"He's on the communion table," the runner said. He released Nicholas and stepped aside. "Didn't seem right to set him on the cold floor." 

Nicholas ran down the center aisle, sliding to a stop in a pool of blood at the base of the communion table. More blood dripped from the table, splattering the toes of his Hessians.

"Leo?" Nicholas reached out to touch the gaping wound in his friend's side, then pulled his hand back as Leo faded away, leaving the communion table empty save for the blood staining its surface.

"He's been doing that off and on since I brought him in here." Lennie's voice held disbelief. "Did it once while I was still carrying him. He was in my arms, then he disappeared and came back again. And he isn't always...er, doesn't always look like himself."

"Stay with him," Nicholas ordered. "I'll get the doctor."

"You can't go out there." Lennie grabbed his sleeve. "She's still there. I've heard her whining at the walls and seen her shadow on the window. I know you're a vampire, but if she could do this to a...a..." Lennie was staring at the place where Leo's body should have been. Slowly the outline of a form was appearing again, but it was not the form of a man. "Is he a werewolf?"

Nicholas shook free of Lennie's grasp and started for the door. Before he took more than a single step, it opened on silent hinges.

"Werewolves," Bergen said as he entered, "don't disappear. And, even wounded, they don't let humans carry them about. Too wild, that lot." 

Bergen walked up the aisle to the sanctuary. Leo was solid again, though not a man. His normally pale gray eyes glowed red. His lips stretched tight over sharp canines, and sleek black fur covered his hands and face. A low growl rumbled from his throat and before their eyes he completed the transformation from man to animal. 

"That's the way he was in the graveyard," Lennie said. 

Bergen left and entered a doorway off to one side of the sanctuary. He returned with a bottle of wine, some linens, and a pitcher. He poured wine over the wound in Leo's side. The howl that rose from the communion table nearly shook the church rafters. Leo faded away and the table was empty. 

Bergen filled the pitcher from the baptismal font and waited. When Leo the man began to reappear, he dipped a cloth in the water and began cleansing the wound, seemingly undaunted by the fact that his patient kept changing from man to animal and back again as he worked.

"Using communion table cloths? Isn't that sacrilege?" Lennie asked.

"You're the one who laid him on the communion table," Bergen said. "Besides, wouldn't it be a greater sacrilege to do nothing and let him die?"

"Amanda?" Leo's voice was not quite human but his eyes were gray once more.

"She's safe in London, Leo. You'll see her soon. Hold on, my friend." Nicholas pulled Bergen a short distance away. Lennie followed. 

"How bad is it?" Nicholas asked the doctor.

"Bad. We need holy water, a true saint's relic, something, or he's not going to survive."

"You won't find such Catholic trappings in the King's own church," Lennie said. "And the nearest Catholic church could be a half day's ride."

"The chapel at Maidenstone was built five hundred years ago when England was Catholic," Nicholas said. "There's a relic beneath the altar, a saint's bone."

"He wouldn't survive the trip," Bergen said. "Even if he did, there's no guarantee the relic is real."

"If it's not, Vlad is," Nicholas said. "We need the priest."

"The vicar is next door," Lennie offered.

"And is a good and holy man," Nicholas said. "But he knows nothing about
bargeists
, or vampires either. We need Vlad."

Bergen frowned at the empty communion table. Leo was gone again. "I'll put Leo back together as well as I can. Whatever we use will have to be brought to him. He's not leaving this church tonight. The goodness of this place is the only reason he's still alive, but it'll take more than an empty church to keep him that way." 

Leo reappeared. The doctor poured more wine over the wound. Leo, caught in mid-change, gave a canine howl that ended in a human gasp. 

"What happened, Lennie?" Nicholas picked up a small brass lamp from a credence table set against one wall. He lifted the lamp's glass chimney and lit the wick with one of the sanctuary candles. 

"After the vicar and I warned the villagers," Lennie said, "we returned to the vicarage. The Reverend drew me a map of the closest farms and loaned me his horse. I didn't even make it to the edge of the forest. Count Glenbury's light-skirt dropped out of the sky in front of me. The horse panicked and reared. I hit the ground and the horse took off with my stakes. I thought Lucy would attack me, but she just sat on a gravestone watching me. I remember wanting to run...and then not wanting to. The longer I looked at her, the calmer I became. Even though I knew what she would do to me, knew I should be afraid, I wasn't. But she didn't attack. She just sat there. Finally, she said, "Enjoy your meal," and laughed. Then she lifted up off the gravestone back into the sky like a damned bird and she was gone. That's when I heard the other one behind me, and finally felt afraid. But it was too late. Your lady's mother...'it'...was on me. Its teeth inches from my throat." Lennie gestured toward the communion table where Leo lay. "Then out of nowhere came a black dog, big as a man. He tore it off me just as it was about to sink its teeth into my throat. That werewolf saved my life."

"Leo isn't a werewolf. He's a
bargeist
," Bergen pronounced the word 'bar-guyst' in the German manner. "What you English call a Shuck or a Black Devil Dog."

"Bargeist, devil dog," Lennie repeated. "Never heard of such a thing, but he fought like the devil. Drove that corpse into the woods, but didn't follow it in. Then the, the bargeist came back across the graveyard, weaving through the stones like a drunk. He was halfway to the church when he collapsed."

"I couldn't just leave him there," Lennie said. "Not after he saved my life. By the time I reached him, it wasn't a, a...well, he was a man. Mrs. Smith’s body had taken a bite out of his side. I tried to get him to the vicar's place, but she came out of the woods just as I reached the church. I got us inside and locked the door. She broke the lock and kicked open the door, but then didn't come in. Just stood there with those horrible fangs dripping with Mr. Fosse's blood, looking at me."

"Leo's blood is of no use to her," Nicholas murmured.

"I backed up and put him on the communion table. When it still didn't come inside, I finally realized it couldn't. So I went and slammed the door in the damn thing's face. It's out there. Waiting. Fielding isn't going to believe any of this."

"Fielding?" Bergen and Nicholas said the name as one, both pivoting to search the church. 

"He wasn't with you?" Bergen's voice was grim. 

"I told him to follow you." Nicholas began moving down the aisle toward the church door, the lamp still in his hand.

"Stay with Leo." Bergen plunged the bloodied communion cloth into the pitcher of water and shoved it at Lennie. "Keep the cloth pressed to the wound, even when he fades away. Bargeists draw their power from the good or evil within people and objects. Water is good, a source of life. A communion table cloth sewn with much love by some pious old lady might help keep him alive as well." The doctor was striding down the aisle as he spoke. 

Nicholas paused at the church door. "Don't leave this church before daylight, Lennie."

Lennie nodded. Nicholas and Bergen stepped out into the night. 

"Did you hear Fielding scream, call out, anything?" Nicholas asked.

"I never even heard his footsteps behind me," Bergen said. 

They returned to the last place they'd seen the detective, the oak beside the church. Bergen watched the graveyard as Nicholas examined the ground at the side of the church and beneath the oak. But too many people had passed that way and Nicholas couldn't discern between the numerous footprints from Amelia's funeral that morning and the men's own tracks. The detective could have gone anywhere. 

A dull sheen of metal caught Nicholas's eye. Fielding's gun lay just a few feet from the base of the tree, almost hidden beneath a bush. The detective hadn't managed to fire off a single shot.

"Where would the
diavol
take him? And why would it take him anywhere when it could simply have fed on him here?" Bergen's words echoed Nicholas's thoughts. 

As if in answer to his question, a choked cry came from above. 

"In a tree?" Bergen sounded incredulous.

Nicholas handed the lamp to Bergen, then leaped up to grasp a branch and swung himself into the tree. Fielding wasn't in the tree, but before he could say so Bergen landed without impact on the branch beside him. The flame of the lamp in his hand didn't even flicker. Nor did the leaves stir. 

The choked sputter of a man's cry sounded again. The church roof? The men leapt out of the oak, landing on the thatched roof. They dropped to their bellies. Bergen handed the lamp back to Nicholas.

"Fielding is more resourceful than I would have supposed." The doctor pointed. 

At the far end of the roof a bell tower rose from the thatch. A pair of narrow pane-less windows graced each of its four stone walls. The bell that had once been inside was gone, removed years earlier when the leaky opening between church and tower had been sealed rather than repaired. 

That the detective had been able to leap from the oak to the roof amazed Nicholas. More astonishing still, somehow Fielding had managed to squeeze his bulk through one of the narrow windows. Ghost-white with terror, the man stood at the center of the tower where the bell had once been. The
diavol
prowled around the lawman's sanctuary, its swollen purple tongue lapping between ravenous fangs.