Dawn Thompson (28 page)

He took up their lantern, knelt down beside the pallet, and examined Milosh’s wounds. “This one is little more than a graze,” he observed. “The bone stopped the bullet; I can see it.” Probing the other, Jon frowned. “This one wants more surgeon’s skill than I possess, I fear,” he said. “It is much deeper. I shall try, but he has lost much blood.” He shook his head and staggered to his feet, taking Cassandra in his arms. “As soon as the water boils, we shall begin. I will need you to help me. You aren’t going to swoon, are you? If you are, tell me now so that I will be prepared. I haven’t much experience at this. I dug a pistol ball from the shoulder of an unfortunate horse my brother accidentally shot once, but I was little more than a lad.”

Cassandra shook her head that she would not swoon. “What if—”

“Shhh!” he cautioned, interrupting. “I hear something.”

Scarcely breathing, Jon waited. The sound came again from the rafters: a rustling noise, like paper being shuffled.
His feeble lantern light showed nothing, but the tongues of flame leaping in the hearth cast tall shadows on the ceiling and at last exposed the author of the noise. A great black bat hung upside down from the corner beam, unfurling its wings. Cassandra screamed.

Before their eyes the bat surged, expanded, and transformed into a tall black figure draped in an ill-fitting, multicaped greatcoat.
Sebastian.

“But we didn’t let him in!” Cassandra whispered.

“He was already here when we arrived,” Jon murmured. “Damn and blast! I should have known. I should have searched! The door was ajar, remember? He needs no leave to enter where no one waits to grant or deny him access. He knew we would come here. What other choice did we have? He was waiting for us, choosing his moment to make his presence known. Stay behind me, and do not look into his eyes!”

Glancing about, Jon searched for some weapon to use against the advancing vampire. How hideous he was, as gaunt as the grave, moving eerily upon feet that made no sound—he almost seemed to be floating. And it was still hours before dawn, much too long to hope that the rising sun would spare them.

Jon cast a furtive glance toward Milosh. The Gypsy hadn’t moved, and Jon prayed he would not now, else he draw the vampire’s attention. Sebastian had been hungering for the Gypsy’s blood for centuries, he knew. Right now, the vampire was salivating over his, which was preferable, since at least he had the means to defend himself, consciousness, and a righteous spirit, even if he was infected. Milosh was helpless, and Jon felt himself too inept to come to the man’s aid, especially with Cassandra to protect as well.

Taking his wife with him, Jon inched toward the door and unlatched it, opening it a crack.

“What are you doing?” Cassandra hissed. “What if there are others?”

“If there are, they cannot enter without an invitation,” Jon said. “And there must be a means for Sebastian to exit.”

“What? You imagine you can just say ‘shoo,’ and he will leave us? You dream! I must change, and my panther will rip his throat out!”

“
No
!” Jon said through clenched teeth—a little too loudly, for it prompted a sardonic smile to crease their foe’s lips. “Stay as you are!”

“But why?”

“I do not know, only sense that you must. My instincts dictate it, and I must trust them now if I trust naught else.”

“I am amused by this little farce but out of patience,” Sebastian said. He had begun circling before the hearth. Jon kept his distance, his gaze fixed upon the vampire’s chin rather than his rheumy, red-rimmed eyes. Those eyes glowed with an iridescent glaze and the pupils narrowed to the shape of a snake’s. Their pull was irresistible—even indirectly, Jon was finding out.

“
Do
not
look into his eyes
!” he warned Cassandra again, this time with unequivocal emphasis, keeping her well behind him while still searching for some weapon to use against the vampire, who had begun to move closer.

“You cannot escape me,” Sebastian gloated. “You exist to play the game only because I allow it. The contest stimulates me. But take no comfort in that. I tire of such amusements. It can only end in one way, Jon Hyde-White. And it is only a matter of when.”

“You were a bishop of the Church. Why did you not resist the vampire who made you, as I resisted you?” Jon queried. It wasn’t wise to provoke the creature, but he was curious—and he needed to stall for time.

“Silence!” Sebastian roared, his breath a mighty, foul-smelling wind that ruffled Jon’s hair, billowed Cassandra’s frock, and stirred the flames in the hearth until they writhed and danced and shrank as if in terror. Cassandra’s grip upon Jon’s arm was bruising despite the superfine coatsleeve. His muscles flexed beneath her fingers, and no words were needed. “I think it ends here now,” the vampire went on. “We shall see how well your God serves you when you wake in Hell, and
she
wakes as my consort for all eternity.”

Sebastian lunged then and lifted Jon off the floor by his throat, his clawlike talons fast in Jon’s shirt, coat collar, and the flesh still smarting from the open wound Jon had taken in the forest. Jon clawed at the bony hand that suspended him off the floor, kicking wildly. His air supply all but choked off by the vampire’s grip, he bared his fangs as Sebastian did, extracting a bloodcurdling laugh from the vampire.

“Ohhhhh, so you mean to fight me?” Sebastian asked. “
You
—my creature, mind—mean to pit your powers against mine? Against me?” He thumped his chest with his free hand, balling it into a white-knuckled fist while shaking Jon with the other. It all but rendered him senseless.

Jon’s breath was coming short as he tore at the hand strangling him. Blood was seeping from the wound on his neck again, the torn flesh breaking open at the rough handling. Vertigo had begun to star his vision with dancing white pinpoints of light when Cassandra’s scream
brought him back from the edge of unconsciousness.
Cassandra
! What would become of her if he succumbed?

“N-no, Cassandra! Stay back . . .” he choked out, knowing full well that she would not obey—and he was helpless to prevent her from getting involved. Screaming again, she skirted him and flew at Sebastian’s back, climbing the monster as if he were a tree, her fists buffeting his spine, battering his shoulders, pummeling his bald head.

The vampire reached behind with his free hand, plucked her off his back as easily as if she were a broom straw, and flung her across the room. She fell hard to the floor, and slid into the wall beside the pallet where Milosh was groaning awake.

Stay down. My God, stay down
! Jon’s mind was screaming. If she heard, she paid him no heed. Scrambling to her feet, she ran to the cauldron where the water Jon had blessed was coming to a boil, and searched among the hearth tools for something to tip it.

Holy water
.
And the oil
! As though a light had suddenly blazed alive in his brain, Jon let go of the vampire’s fist at his throat and plunged one hand into his pocket, rummaging for the silver container of holy oil he’d nearly forgotten. After a moment, his fingers closed around it. Keeping an eye upon Cassandra struggling with the cauldron, he tugged at the lid with all his one-handed strength, his heart hammering so fiercely he feared it would burst in his breast as the vampire sniffed the blood leaking down his neck.

Reaching out with a free hand, Sebastian wiped that blood onto his fingers and licked them clean one by one. “You will be delicious, though it is a pity to drain you and end this,” the vampire said, “but you know I must. I always finish what I start . . . however long it takes me.”

Jon’s eyes were snapping in all directions. He could barely breathe. Sebastian’s fangs were inches from his throat. Over his shoulder, he saw Milosh attempting to rise, while to his right Cassandra had unearthed a pair of tongs and was trying to get a grip with them on the hot cauldron. One last tug of his fingers on the lid of the sacramental oil container removed it, and he plunged his thumb into the unction inside. Yanking his hand out of his pocket, he slammed his thumb squarely in the center of the vampire’s forehead, making the sign of the cross on Sebastian’s cold gray skin.

“Now,
Cassandra!” Jon choked out, for the vampire’s grip had tightened. The monster had swooped down toward his throat, his fangs fully extended. “Tip it now!”

Sebastian screamed at the touch of the oil. Smoke was rising from the burn it had left in his ashen, blue-veined skin. Out of the corner of his eye, Jon saw the cauldron tip, spilling scalding holy water over the floor, over Sebastian’s feet. It splashed higher, and the vampire loosed a guttural shriek and threw Jon down. Clutching his head, the creature spun and surged to a grander height, challenging the ceiling in the little cottage, taking the same form Jon had seen him morph into at the castle. Great wings strong enough to break a man’s back flailed the air. Jon scrambled out of the way, jumped up, and took Cassandra in his arms. Smoke rose from the vampire’s feet, where the holy water singed.

This was the true creature—half human, half bat, an abhorrent corruption of a holy man. Angry tears stung Jon’s eyes at the terrible waste. This creature had once been a bishop of the Church, he reminded himself. It stood before him now, convulsed by wracking, unnatural spasms. Something stabbed at Jon’s innards, as if a giant
fist gripped his guts. He longed in that split second to move forward, to put the creature that was writhing and spinning before him in a smoky swirl out of its misery. His fangs descended.

“No, Jon!” Cassandra shrilled, holding him back. “Don’t go near it! Let it go!”

“
Jon
.” Milosh’s feeble voice echoed from behind. “Not that way. You mustn’t. Not . . . that . . . way . . .”

Sebastian hissed at Milosh like a snake. “Gypsy! Your hour comes soon enough.” He spat at them all: “Take no comfort in this little victory. You are dead—the lot of you!” Then, shrieking like a banshee, he folded his gigantic wings over his head and spun like a cyclone, taking the cottage door off its hinges as he crashed through and disappeared out into the rain.

Jon crushed Cassandra against him, his fingers threaded through her honeyed curls, holding her face against his thundering heart. Then he pushed her away, his hands racing desperately over her body.

“Are you hurt?” he murmured. Gripping her chin, he turned her face to and fro in the hearthlight. “You took a nasty fall, Cassandra.”

She shook her head. “No, just had the wind knocked out of me,” she murmured.

Spinning toward the pallet, Jon stared toward Milosh, who had lost consciousness again. “He is badly hurt, Cassandra,” he said. “He has lost much blood. I must try to do what I set out to do. You must keep watch. There is still at least an hour before dawn. Sebastian will not return—for all his bluster and bravado, he must regain his strength before he comes at us again—but he has minions aplenty. We dare not relax our guard, not for a moment.”

“The door!” she reminded him.

It was hanging by one hinge, and Jon strode to it, dragged it upright, and began tugging it back into place. Behind, the sound of Cassandra’s gasp turned him toward her.

“Look!” she cried, pointing through the open doorway.

Jon’s head snapped up, and he took a chill that wracked his body. There in the teeming rain stood three mute urchins—two girls and a boy—trailing what looked like grave clothes.

Jon let the door fall from his hands. “Remove the knives,” he said, “and fetch me what’s left of the water in that cauldron.” He stared out at the three undead children.

Cassandra did as he bade her, but she hesitated before handing over the cauldron, her eyes brimming with tears. The three pitiful waifs were moving nearer, their desperate wails begging admittance, their pleading, outstretched arms cunningly irresistible.

Jon tugged the cauldron out of her hands. “Have you forgotten the child when we last stayed here?” he asked. “If they are vampires, this will repel them. If they are not, no harm will be done.” But when he tossed the contents of the cauldron full in the waifs’ faces, fangs extending, all three hissed and shrieked. Then they spun off in the form of bats, their sawing wings unfurled, to disappear into the treetops.

Cassandra turned away, clearly ill. Jon would not admonish her. Had he not just felt remorse over Sebastian, of all things—over the tragedy of one of God’s anointed having fallen? He was committed to his mission, to destroying the undead, to bringing the peace of the grave to these victims, to becoming a ruthless hunter of creatures like himself and to either send them to hell or to save them from it according to the severity of their infection.
But was Cassandra similarly driven? Could he expect her to be?

He snatched a hinge bolt from the floor where it had fallen, tugged the door upright again, and slid the bolt through the twisted top hinge. The door hung awry and would not close tightly enough. Still, it would have to do. Dragging the table across the room, he wedged it against the gaping door and turned back to the chore at hand, that of attending to Milosh.

Jon staggered back from the pallet. It was covered with blood—so much blood, it was torture. It affected Cassandra as well; he could see it in her eyes. And how could it not? Once one was infected, the craving for blood was unstoppable, insatiable. It was always present. The metallic aroma could be detected at great distances. It made a person mad.

He reflected on his own control. Milosh had remarked upon its rarity. Was it his vocation that gave him the power to resist? Was it his faith? Had it been Sebastian’s lack of faith that made him succumb and become the creature he now was? Clive Snow had touched upon that topic, too, though it seemed like a lifetime ago. Did he truly have a greater will? Or was it simply that Sebastian hadn’t fully infected him?

Staring down at Milosh’s inert body, Jon heaved a mammoth sigh. How long could he continue to fight the urges? They were getting stronger. How long could he keep himself from doing great wrong, from becoming a full-fledged vampire ineligible for the saving grace of the blood moon
ritual? If all went well, he would only have to fight for several more hours, but the opposition was swiftly mounting against him: the rain, for one thing; having been driven back to a veritable nest of vampires for another; and now Milosh. The blood moon ritual was to take place during the eclipse. Even if the rain stopped, the vampires roaming the forest would rise then. It would not be safe to leave Milosh alone, and yet Jon could not be in two places at once.