Night of the Wolves (15 page)

In the midst of washing up, she paused, closed her eyes and breathed deeply, wishing she could carry the scent of him with her always.

She opened her eyes and caught sight of the wild mane of her hair in the mirror, and quickly reached for a brush. It took several long minutes to undo the tangles and smooth it down into the semblance of a proper coif. Next she dressed hastily. Remembering the way the shadow-bats, the vampires, had descended the night before, she opted for riding breeches, boots and a tailored shirt, for mobility.

She couldn’t resist the temptation to pause before she left the room and picked up her pillow, where a hint of his scent remained. She was being silly, she told herself.

Silly, and sad. There was something about him. But he wasn’t going to stay in her life. He had made that clear.

And she would have no regrets over what she had done, the pleasure they had shared. Nor would she ever attempt to hold him back from whatever he felt his future demanded of him.

She bit her lip and set down the pillow.

She had been in love the proper way once. She’d met a man who loved her, who’d asked her father’s blessing for her hand. She had loved him back, and she’d felt as if her heart and soul had been torn from her when he died.

And yet…she hadn’t felt like this. As if every breath whispered of him, as if he had become one with her, body and soul.

She squared her shoulders in determination and left the room.

As some might say, she had made her own bed. And now she had to lie in it.

Downstairs, she found Beulah in a disgruntled mood, annoyed that she was so late to breakfast. Alex refused to go along with the other woman’s mood. “Don’t you think it’s a lovely day, Beulah? Last night we fought against evil, and we won.”

Beulah shook her head. “You’re acting like it’s all over, child. You mark my words. It’s just beginning. Now, eat your breakfast.”

Alex sat down at the table and tried to be casual as she asked, “Where are Brendan and Cody?”

“Up for hours, I’ll tell you that,” Beulah said, sniffing as she filled Alex’s coffee cup.

“Do you know where they went?”

“Down to the sheriff’s office, I think.”

Alex thanked Beulah and ate quickly, and as soon as she was finished, she told the cook she was going to take a walk down to the sheriff’s office, too, and find out what was going on.

Beulah stared at her gravely. “Wherever those men are, you be back here by dusk, Alexandra Gordon, you hear me?”

“Of course, Beulah. And I will. I swear.”

Then she hurried out, her every thought of Cody and the incredible night they’d shared.

C
ODY AND
B
RENDAN HAD
started early and reached what had been Brigsby by noon, which gave them an hour of full and advantageous daylight before they would have to head back.

Milo Roundtree had obviously found a hiding place to use by day. He had attacked Brigsby first, then Hollow Tree, which made those likely candidates but far from a certainty.

Cody felt weary, thinking of the many ways Milo could attack the target now in his sights: Victory.

He could choose an all-out assault, as he had last night, or he could approach using seduction and trickery. Vampires delighted in temptation, in pulling the strings of emotion and preying on the basic instinct of human desire. And no matter how proud the community might be of their success last night, if he didn’t find Milo’s hideout and destroy the vampires while they slept, eventually the creatures would find a way to infiltrate Victory.

And what really terrified him was that the way might lead through Alex….

Alex, whose father’s grave was empty.

Which meant that Eugene Gordon was out there somewhere, and Cody didn’t have the heart to tell Alex that her father had to be hunted down and destroyed.

He reminded himself that he had occasionally—very occasionally, it had to be said—seen cases in which a vampire who had truly cared for someone in life shunned harming them, even after “death.” Such a vampire had been extremely strong-willed in life as well as afterward,
and though he hadn’t known Eugene Gordon, those who
had
known him referred to him as a man of strong will.

He thought of the way Alex had been drawn to the balcony….

That hadn’t been a call from her father.

He wondered if Eugene was somehow surviving on his own, hiding by day and feeding in secret at night, or if he was with Milo’s gang, essentially hiding in plain sight while somehow managing to stay out of the attacks on Victory.

He shook off those thoughts for a later day as they stopped in the center of Brigsby’s main street. The entire town was covered with a thick layer of plains dust. The door to the combination barber shop and dentist’s office was slamming open, then shut, in the breeze, and the swinging saloon doors hung at odd angles, the lower hinges ripped free.

Cody dismounted and held very still, listening, closing his eyes and using his other senses. He felt nothing.

Nothing but emptiness.

“I’ll check the saloon,” Brendan said.

“We’ll stick together,” Cody told him.

They tethered the horses between the saloon and a general mercantile, then carried the tools of their trade inside, in case there was trouble.

The saloon was empty.

Empty except for the decaying, almost mummified, remains of a man who’d fallen over the poker table, his jaw at an odd angle.

He’d been holding a pair of aces.

Sadly, they had won him nothing.

Brendan looked at the corpse, then at Cody, and arched a brow.

Cody shook his head. “Dead as a doornail. Still…”

He walked over to the corpse, took the head in his hands and twisted. The dried flesh and bone broke easily. He set the head down on the table and said sadly, “We don’t have time for decent burials.”

“I know. Let’s move on,” Brendan said, his voice all business.

In the mercantile, they paused and stared at shelves of fabric, grain, feed and canned goods, all covered in fine cobwebs.

What gave them cause for concern was the fact that the floor was strewn with animal corpses—cats, dogs, rats, squirrels, one calf and one coyote—and the body of an elderly man.

This time Cody didn’t need to remove the head. The body had already been savagely torn apart.

He signaled Brendan to be still and quietly moved to the end of the counter, his hand tightly gripped around a stake.

Something, someone, exploded out at Cody. He was ready with the stake and pierced the creature before so much as seeing its face or knowing its sex, race, color or anything other than that he was being viciously attacked.

The thing gripped the stake, casting back its head, giving the men a glimpse of wildly matted hair and a face so heavily bearded it might have belonged to a werewolf.

Cody pinned the vampire to the floor, where it thrashed furiously in its death throes.

Finally it went still, and the skin started to crackle and darken.

It was a young creature and stopped decaying before it became a pile of ash.

Brendan had stepped up behind Cody. “I knew him,” he said softly. “His name was JoJo Grayson, and he was kind of a woodsman, kind of a gypsy. He made his money hunting rattlesnakes and trapping critters for fur. He came through all the towns around here when he felt in need of a night at a saloon. Always smelled to high heaven, but he was a harmless old coot.”

Cody hunkered down and cut off the man’s head.

Now
he was harmless.

“So what do you think? Is the hideout here?” Brendan asked softly.

Cody shook his head. “No, this isn’t it.”

“Hollow Tree, then,” Brendan said dully.

“Seems likely,” Cody admitted. “We’ve got to finish here, see if there are any other wild cards, and get back to town before nightfall. Tomorrow we’ll head out to Hollow Tree.”

He retrieved his stake and stood.

They moved on. There were a lot of buildings in Brigsby and not much time to search them.

T
HE SHERIFF’S OFFICE
was empty.

Alex stood on the wooden sidewalk and looked down the street. Jim Green saw her and waved, so she smiled and waved in return. A woman was sweeping out in front of the general store, and a man farther down the street was up on his roof, patching shingles.

She turned and looked out toward the cemetery. Though she couldn’t tell who they were, she could see that there were people there.

Were they burying the dead from last night’s battle?

Maybe Cole and Dave were out at the cemetery, she thought, and maybe Cody and Brendan, too.

She turned around and headed back to the boardinghouse. She didn’t feel like a lecture from Beulah, so she avoided the front door and walked around back, aiming straight for the stables.

She found Levy cleaning out the stalls and assured him that she could saddle Cheyenne herself, and also told him that she was only heading out to the cemetery.

He leaned on his shovel for a moment. “I figured you’d be heading out there soon enough. I was kind of surprised you hadn’t been already.”

Her heart flipped, and guilt ripped through her. She had desperately needed to see the place where her father had died; somehow, she had believed that seeing the site would tell her the truth about his death. But she had avoided the cemetery. The place where he had been buried. She had kept it out of her heart and out of her mind. If she didn’t see his grave, she didn’t have to fully accept the fact that he was dead, that he wasn’t coming back.

She thought of the dream she’d had the other night. He would always be in her dreams. In that way, she told herself, he never would die.

“Right, Levy,” she said softly. “Well, I won’t be long. And it’s perfectly safe—there are other people out there, and, anyway, you can see the cemetery from the sheriff’s office.”

Levy nodded. He looked as if he wanted to speak, but he didn’t.

“I’ll be back soon,” she promised.

It was a short canter out to the cemetery. As she neared it, she saw that Cole, Dave and a number of other men
were there. They’d built a funeral pyre safely outside the weathered wooden gates, and dug a pit, and she knew that the remains of the undead who had been truly killed last night would be interred in that pit.

As she dismounted, Cole spotted her. “Alex, what are you doing out here?” he demanded with dismay.

“I came to see my father’s grave,” she said, but guilt assailed her as she spoke. True, she
was
going to visit her father’s grave.

But curiosity and restlessness were really what had brought her.

“Alex, this isn’t a good time to be doing that,” Cole said.

But she had already skirted the fire and entered the cemetery. “I know where he is,” she said. “He always told me he wanted the highest point, dead center, because he’d thought of himself as the dead center of Victory for so long,” she told Dave.

“Alex—”

“What in God’s name…?” Alex murmured.

The graveyard looked as if it had been under attack, a number of graves standing open and empty in front of their silent headstones. She turned to stare at Cole for a long moment, then ran up the small hill at the center of the cemetery.

She found her father’s grave right where she had expected it to be.

The ground was freshly dug, a giant hole gaping in the ground and her father’s coffin lying beside it, open and empty.

A
S HE RODE BACK INTO TOWN
, worn and weary, Cody saw the group gathered at the cemetery.

And he saw Alex, standing by her father’s grave, fists clenched at her sides as she stared wordlessly at Cole Granger.

“Oh, hell,” Cody muttered.

“Maybe you should have talked to her, broken it to her gently,” Brendan said.

Cody scowled at his friend. “You think I should have told her that her father might be a vampire, part of Milo Roundtree’s gang?”

Cody kneed his tired horse and galloped toward the cemetery. Brendan urged his own horse to hurry and followed. As they approached, several of the people who had been tending the fire greeted them, but Cody only waved distractedly as he leaped off his horse, threw the reins over the fence and strode quickly toward the tense scene on the hill.

“What’s the matter with you, Cole?” Alex was saying as Cody approached. “How dare you dig up my father? You had no right to disturb his grave—any of these graves. Why did you do it, Cole? Why?”

Cody knew the minute she saw him coming, because
she stiffened, her eyes narrowing in fury. His stomach took a dive.

“Alex,” he said sharply. “Don’t lash into Cole—none of this is his fault or even his doing. If you need to blame someone, blame me.”

“Cody, it’s all right, I can take care of myself,” Cole said.

Before Cody could speak again, Alex walked over to him with long, hard strides and shoved him hard. “What the hell are you doing? Everyone has been so grateful for your knowledge and help, everyone has done everything you’ve ordered. But now you’re taking advantage of this community. What? Did you draw straws, trying to decide who you should disinter and chop to pieces? What kind of a ghoul are you?”

She slammed his chest hard again to emphasize her anger.

He caught her wrists. “Alex, listen. We didn’t choose anything. We only did what we had to do. I’m sure Cole would have explained—if you’d given him a chance.”

“Why did you dig up these people? Why did you dig up my
father?
” she demanded furiously.

“Alex, we didn’t choose to dig them up. They’d already dug themselves out.”

“What?” Her eyes widened in shocked realization.

“You know what vampires are—you’ve seen them. When a person is bled to death by a vampire,
they come back
. How the hell did you think it happened?”

She shook her head. “But…they were in their graves! Cole said you had to decapitate them, like the man who died in the street, like the vampires we killed last night.”

“Yes,” Cody said.

She stared from him to Cole. “So you found them in their graves? But…why weren’t they with Milo?”

“Milo doesn’t want everyone he infects. He leaves them to stumble around like newborns, starving, desperate, deadly newborns. Alex, we let them rest in peace. We keep them from killing, don’t you understand?”

“And my father? You did that to my father?”

Cody was silent for a split second too long.

“No,” Cole told her.

“Why not?”

“Because he wasn’t in his grave.”

She stared at him for a long moment, saying nothing. Then she turned and raced down the hill to where her mare was tethered. She mounted in one smooth motion, and then, kicking up dust, horse and rider went racing off toward town.

“Where in hell is she going?” Dave demanded.

Cody didn’t answer him. He was already halfway down the hill, intent on following Alex.

A
LEX COULD HAVE HEADED
straight to the lodging house. Beulah always kept alcohol on hand—for medicinal purposes, the cook said—and she could have chosen from brandy, sherry and perhaps some wine.

But she didn’t want to go home.

She reined in at the saloon, sliding from Cheyenne’s back and leaving the mare loosely tied at the hitching post in front. Then she strode through the swinging doors and walked straight to the bar.

Roscoe looked at her, hesitant. As if he was afraid of her.

“I’d like a whiskey, Roscoe,” she said.

“Uh…pardon?” he said, blinking.

“I would like a whiskey,” she repeated more slowly.

“Miss Alex…”

“A whiskey, Roscoe,” she said.

He nodded, turned and poured her a drink. Alex took a long swallow, and a shudder racked her body. She grimaced. God, the stuff tasted awful.

But as it burned its way down her throat and into her stomach, she found that, oddly enough, it did give her strength.

They were all crazy, she thought. Her father was not a vampire. He was nothing like Milo Roundtree.

“Miss Alex?”

She spun around. Jigs was sitting on the piano bench, his back toward the keys.

“Hey, Jigs,” she said glumly, then looked at him more closely. She frowned. He looked tired, ashen.

“Are you all right?” she asked him.

“I reckon I’m tired, and I know I’m worried. Dave Hinton right kindly been sleeping here the last couple of nights. He keeps vigil from midnight to 4:00 a.m., then I take over for a few hours, and then Roscoe.”

She heard footsteps and looked up. Linda was coming down the stairs. Alex tried to watch her objectively. It was just so difficult, seeing Linda—Linda Gordon, that was her name now—so blithe and overt about her promiscuous sexuality when Eugene Gordon had done her the honor of making her his wife. When Alex had left after their conversation the other day, she had found herself actually liking the woman.

But right now, on top of what she’d just learned about her father, Linda, in all her skimpy finery, was the last person Alex wanted to see.

“What’s the matter, sweetie?” Linda asked casually on her way to the bar.

“You watched them bury my father, right? I mean, you weren’t out of town, seeking the future, before he was buried, were you?” Alex asked.

Linda started, then smiled slowly. “Ooh. Sweet little Alex has claws.”

“Just answer me. Please.”

The amusement on the other woman’s features faded. “Of course I was at his funeral. Which you didn’t attend, I might add.”

“I didn’t even know he was dead. You know damned well he was buried long before the letters ever reached me,” Alex said.

Linda still seemed wary after Alex’s initial attack. “I saw him buried, yes. Jim Green took care of him, and the pastor came over from Brigsby to make sure he was buried with a full Christian ceremony,” Linda said. “Why?”

Alex didn’t get a chance to answer. Cody, who was suddenly standing just inside the swinging doors, spoke for her. “Because he’s not in his grave. That’s why.”

Linda looked from Cody to Alex. “Of course he’s in his grave,” she said, as if they’d both lost their minds.

“No, he’s not,” Cody said. “We dug up his grave the other day. The earth was already disturbed, and his coffin wasn’t sealed. And he wasn’t in it.”

Linda shook her head, wrinkling her nose prettily. “I don’t understand. Are you accusing me of stealing Eugene’s body?”

“I’m not accusing anyone of anything,” Cody said, walking over to join them. “I’m just stating a fact.”

“Oh, yes, you are,” Alex said, rounding on him. “You’re
accusing my father of being a vampire. Like Milo Roundtree.”

“I never said he was like Milo Roundtree,” Cody argued.

“God in heaven,” Roscoe breathed, pouring a whiskey into the shot glass and downing it in one swift movement.

“But they all have to be destroyed. They’re all monsters, right?” Alex demanded.

Cody was stubbornly silent.

Alex looked at Linda again. “Tell me, have you seen my father? Has he been hanging around outside your balcony, calling to you—quoting from
Cyrano
, maybe. Or maybe Shakespeare. He always loved Shakespeare. Maybe he’s playing Romeo, trying to entice his Juliet to come out and have her neck bitten and her blood sucked dry!”

“Alex,” Linda murmured.

Alex was in a state verging on hysterics, and she knew it. She should have gone home. She
would
go home.

She turned and headed toward the door, pushing past Cody to make her escape.

Cole and Dave were just tethering their horses and stepping up onto the wooden sidewalk. “Alex,” Cole said sympathetically. “One of us should have—”

“Not now, Cole,” she said. Without another word, she collected Cheyenne’s reins and led her horse home, walking her around the side of the house to the stable. Levy must have heard her coming; he was waiting at the barn door to take the horse from her.

“Miss Alex? You all right?” he asked her.

“What the hell does ‘all right’ even mean around here anymore?” she asked him.

It was Levy’s look of sympathy that pierced through the
miasma of fear and dread that had gripped her and touched something in her heart.

She forced a smile. “I’m fine, Levy. How are
you
doing?”

“Good, Miss Alex. I feel good, and angry—and strong,” he assured her.

“Thank you, Levy.” She turned and started toward the back door of the boardinghouse, then stopped and looked back at him. “Levy, do you ever have dreams? Nightmares?”

He shrugged. “No, not really. Well, not that I remember, anyway.”

“Have you ever dreamed about my father?”

“No, Miss Alex.” He frowned, clearly confused by the question.

She shook her head, hesitating, as she felt tears welling in her eyes. She blinked them back. “If you ever should dream about him—if you think he may be calling to you, asking for help, or just looking for you—don’t go to him.”

“Pardon, miss?”

“Don’t go to him. Promise me you won’t go to him.”

“I—I promise, Miss Alex.”

He was staring at her, but not in a way that suggested she was crazy.

No, it was a look of helplessness.

She smiled sadly, shook her head and went inside.

She passed through the kitchen, where Beulah was preparing dinner, stirring something in a pot that bubbled over the fire. Tess was sitting at the table, peeling potatoes, and Jewell was next to her, snapping peas.

“There you are, Alex. I was about to get worried. I wonder if them fellows will be back for dinner tonight.
Well, you go ahead and wash up. Won’t be long now till the food is ready,” Beulah said.

“I think I’m going straight to bed tonight, Beulah. Feels like I just ate lunch,” Alex said.

“What? You’ve got to eat,” Beulah insisted.

Alex ignored her and headed upstairs, well aware that Cody and Brendan would be coming back soon, and not in the mood for conversation.

She headed straight to her room. There was clean water in the ewer, and she poured some into the washbowl, then doused her face. She prayed it would somehow make her feel better.

When she was done, she pulled off her boots and hose, and lay on her bed, staring up at the ceiling.

No one knew how her father had died. They had simply found his body.

He hadn’t been torn to shreds, just lying there…dead.

Dead as if someone had sucked all the blood from him.

He had been prepared for burial and interred in the ground. Six feet under.

And now he was no longer in his grave.

She didn’t feel angry anymore. She felt numb. She told herself that her father could never be a monster, and she thought about her dream.

He hadn’t been about to hurt her. He had been trying to save her from Milo Roundtree. He had been
warning
her.

She winced, remembering how Cody had warned people that they mustn’t be fooled by the cries of their loved ones.

Her father was different. Had to be different.

She rose and went over to her dressing table, where she sat thoughtfully brushing her hair.

She shook her head as if she could clear the awful implications of what might have happened to her father from her mind. Once the concept of vampires would have struck her as ridiculous.

But she had seen them, had seen them swooping down, black shadow-bats with death in their eyes, and she had seen what had happened when they were killed. She had seen April Snow.

She lay down again. If she could sleep, it might be possible to dream, and…maybe in a dream she could reach out and find her father. If her previous dream had truly been a vision, he wasn’t with Milo Roundtree.

He hadn’t become a vicious killer.

He…

He what? He was living alone, hiding out somewhere, fighting the blood thirst, that, according to Cody, had to be ravaging him?

Maybe it was true, maybe…

She closed her eyes, willing her breathing to come slow and easy.

C
ODY ENTERED THE HOUSE
through the front and went from room to room, looking for Alex.