Night of the Wolves (19 page)

Cody looked as if he wanted to say something to her, but he didn’t speak.

“I should go with you,” Alex said into the silence.

“No, you need to stay here,” Cody said, and turned away. A moment later he and Brendan walked quickly toward the stables.

Alex started to follow, but Bert set a heavy hand on her shoulder and drew her aside, making certain none of the others could hear when he said, “Alexandra Gordon, what is wrong with you? Do you want to get that boy killed?”

She turned quickly to him. “Bert, I can help.”

“You can help best by staying right here.”

She turned and went into the house, furious but inwardly acknowledging that he was right.

T
HEY REACHED
Hollow Tree in a few hours.

They had come heavily armed, but when they reached the center of town, Cody held still, a sinking feeling in his heart.

The town felt empty.

He turned to Brendan, who was looking haggard. This was where his family had lived. There was no doubt now. Hollow Tree was a ghost town. Tumbleweeds swept down the street, and nothing more.

Brendan dismounted in silence. “Let’s do this. If anything is left crawling around, we’ve got to put it out of its misery—and prevent the same thing happening to anyone else.”

Cody nodded, and Brendan started toward one of the buildings, his coat shoved behind his holster, a stake in his hand, his bow and quiver of arrows hung over his back.

“Brendan,” Cody said, and Brendan stopped, his back to his friend.

“Maybe I should do this alone.”

Brendan swung around. “I’ll be all right. Really, what are the chances we’ll find that my brother and his wife were the ones left here to…to feed on rodents? I say we move. Together. Come on.”

Cody joined him.

Hollow Tree had been built according to much the same plan as Victory, Brigsby and dozens of other small towns that serviced the ranches and farms in the vastness of Texas. The sheriff’s office was at one end of town, and the saloon was on the opposite side of the street at the other.

Hollow Tree had a small but fine church, however, at the corner of Main Street and what might have become a thriving cross street, had the town been given a chance to grow.

There was a barber shop right next to the sheriff’s office, along with a general mercantile, a haberdashery and a place that had been called Miss Lola’s Boutique. There were a pharmacy and a bank on the other side of the street. A fellow named Dr. Bernard Pritchard had set up his practice in town, along with James Jones, Esquire, Attorney at Law. Cody also saw a livery, a saddle maker and a blacksmith.

One by one, they started going through the buildings. Most were completely deserted, but a few contained corpses,
human
corpses, along with several decapitated vampires. Apparently someone in Hollow Tree had figured out how to fight the creatures, but if he had survived, he was no longer around.

Cody had been convinced that this was where Milo was holing up, so he searched every building with painstaking thoroughness. He looked for storm cellars, thinking of the way Bill Simpson and his family had taken shelter the night before, but they found nothing. He opened every closet in every building, businesses and residences alike, including the aptly called Hollow Tree Lodging House.

In small print beneath the name were the words Families Welcome. Not anymore, he thought grimly.

It was when they were nearly finished with the task at hand that they suddenly heard the loud slamming of a door. They stopped dead and looked at each other.

The sound had come from the church.

A
LEX WAS CONVINCED SHE
couldn’t spend another minute in the house without going crazy.

In her effort to make sure that their guests didn’t sit around dwelling on the troubles in their lives, Beulah had set the Simpsons to work; they were busily sharpening brooms, mops and any appropriate household utensil into a stake. The archery targets were still set up, and Bert had promised that when they finished with burial detail, he would be back to help the boys practice.

Jim Green had rallied quickly and was angry now. He wanted revenge. He, too, was happy to sharpen brooms and think about getting some target practice in, as well.

Alex managed to slip out to the stables. She didn’t bother saddling Cheyenne; she leaped up on the horse the way Tall Feather had, then urged the mare along the carriage trail beside the house before hesitating. She didn’t want to put anyone in danger—especially herself—and she didn’t want to worry anyone, but she couldn’t sit there in the house anymore.

She decided to help with the burial detail and called through one of the windows to tell Beulah where she was going, hoping to avoid giving the other woman a chance to protest.

Of course, Beulah tried to get one in, anyway.

“Alex Gordon, why on earth would you want to do that? You really ought to be—”

Alex didn’t hear the rest.

She was already riding out.

She could see the men working as she rode closer, struggling because the ground out here was hard.

But a few of the townspeople had pitched in, and they seemed to be making as quick a task of it as possible.

Alex flicked the reins across Cheyenne’s neck, and the mare took off, delighting in stretching her legs as she
galloped across the open land between the graveyard and the town.

Cole looked up, resting his hands on his shovel as she drew near, slowing her mare.

“You should be at home,” he said wearily.

“I came to see if I could help.”

A flicker of amusement crossed his face. “What, you think you can dig faster than these men and me?”

She flushed. “No.” She slid down from Cheyenne’s back, tied the mare to the fence and walked over to him.

The corpses had been taken from the wagon and were lined up on the ground, covered with blankets.

The breeze blew a strand of hair into her eyes and she swept it aside, looking at Cole. “Did you know any of them?”

“Yeah,” he said. “The doc is there, and a young fellow named Sam Birch, who was starting up a newspaper. But there’s one corpse…no. He might have been passing through or something. Looks like a Latin gentleman. None of us knew him.”

Alex sighed. “The doc—I remember him. I saw him a few times when I got sick…and when I broke my fingers once.”

“He was a right fine man,” Cole said.

“And Jim Green’s nephew…” she murmured. “I really would like to help. I can’t dig better or faster than anyone, but—”

Before she could say more, she noticed that Cole was looking past her. She heard hoofbeats and swung around to see who was coming.

Three riders were heading their way.

Three women.

Linda Gordon, Dolly and Sherry Lyn, from the saloon.

“Great,” Cole muttered.

The women slid down from their horses and walked over. They looked awkward—except for Linda, who seemed to be in charge, even though Dolly was the madam.

Linda walked straight to the fence and accosted Cole.

“We need to see the corpses, Sheriff.”

“Linda, please. No one needs to see those corpses,” Cole said. “Go home.”

Linda nodded toward Alex. “You let my stepdaughter in,” she pointed out. “Girls, come on. It’s our right to see the dead.”

Cole’s jaw tightened, and he shook his head.

“Cole, please…” Sherry Lyn said. “There was someone…I had a man, an old friend from back East, and he was coming out to see me. I…he didn’t care what I’d been doing. Please.”

“Sherry Lyn, if you cared about him, you don’t want to see him,” Cole said.

“I have to, Cole,” she said. “His name is Carlos Ramiro, and…I have to know. I have to see….”

Cole fell silent then, and he made no protest as they walked around to the gate, where the other men greeted them politely, tipping their hats.

No one tried to stop them, only watched as Linda walked straight over to the row of bodies. She pulled back each blanket in turn until she got to the fourth corpse and went still.

Sherry Lyn suddenly let out a cry that was horrified, mournful, and full of the worst agony and loss imaginable. Then she fell to her knees and crawled over to the corpses.

“Sherry Lyn, no!” Dolly cried in dismay.

But Sherry Lyn wasn’t to be deterred. She reached for the body of the man Cole had assumed to be a traveler and wailed, “It’s him. Oh, God, it’s him!”

She started to reach for the corpse, moving to hold him as if he were a soldier, dead in battle.

“No!” Cole called out, racing over to her.

But he was too late.

As Sherry Lyn clutched the body, the head went rolling away, and blank brown eyes stared sightlessly up to heaven.

L
INDA DRAGGED
the sobbing Sherry Lyn away from the body and held her comfortingly.

Everyone else stood there staring, clearly feeling uncomfortable.

Who would have guessed that a whore like Sherry Lyn would have been in love with a stranger none of them had even known existed?

Cole walked over to the girls, Alex at his heels, and patted Sherry Lyn on the back while she cried on Linda’s shoulder. “There, there,” he said ineffectually. “I’m sorry you had to see this. Linda will take you on back now. Roscoe can give you a double shot of whiskey, and maybe you’ll be able to sleep for a bit.”

Linda stared at him. “Whiskey and sleep. Think that will cure her, do you?”

“Please, Linda, take her back. It’s no good her standing here with his…with the bodies…oh, come on, please. Let us get back to seeing them properly buried and have mercy on Sherry Lyn and get her out of here.”

Linda glared at him but apparently saw his point. “Ladies, let’s get home. Sherry Lyn, you need to lie down, and I want to check the place and make sure we’ll be safe.” She glanced at Cole. “Not that you don’t make us
feel safe. It’s just that…seems like everything’s on edge, like we’re waiting for something to happen.”

“It’s always good to be alert—and do everything in your power to make sure you’re not taken by surprise,” Cole said.

Linda looked at him and nodded again.

“If Sherry Lyn is too upset to ride, I can take her back in the wagon, Cole,” Dave said.

Alex opened her mouth, hoping to quickly distract Sherry Lyn from thoughts of the wagon—the wagon that had carried her lover’s corpse to its final resting place.

But she was too late. Sherry Lyn took one look at the wagon and burst into tears again.

“What did I say?” Dave asked, as Alex stared accusingly at him.

“Come on,” Alex said forcefully, slipping an arm through Sherry Lyn’s. “I want to get out of here myself,” she said. “Let’s leave the men to their digging. I’d love a drink right now, a big swig of whiskey.”

She walked to the gate, at first more or less dragging Sherry Lyn. But Linda helped, and between them, they managed to get Sherry Lyn out to where the horses were tethered, and she grew more malleable once they were outside the confines of the cemetery.

As they rode back toward town, Linda glanced over at Alex. “Very decent of you,” she said.

Alex studied Linda’s face. There was a curve to her lips that might have been a smile—or might have been a mocking smirk. The woman was difficult to read.

She nodded and rode ahead, not in the mood to try to figure out the stranger her father had married.

They reached the saloon and entered through the heavy new wooden doors—which weren’t locked, Alex noted.

But it was daytime, and the fact that a saloon was open to the public meant, according to Cody, that it was more easily accessible to vampire intrusion than a private home, where only friends were invited in. Open to the public—just like her boardinghouse.

Roscoe was behind the bar, lining up shot glasses, and at the sound of the doors opening and the girls entering, he was so startled that he sent one flying into the air. He caught it swiftly, looking embarrassed.

“Hey, Roscoe,” Alex said.

Linda laughed softly. “You could have locked the door,” she told him.

“It’s daytime, and someone might have come in. Someone with money who wanted to pay for a drink,” he said, then frowned darkly when he noticed Sherry Lyn’s tear-stained face. “More bad news?” he asked glumly.

“She knew one of the dead men the Indians brought in,” Linda told him.

“Roscoe, we’d all like whiskey, please,” Alex said.

He stared at her curiously for a moment, then shrugged. “Sure. Whiskey all around. On the house. What the hell else have we got to do?”

Like the others, Alex slid up on a bar stool. Once the shots were poured, Linda lifted her glass. “Cheers to us—at least we’re still standing. And we might as well drink, just like the old Europeans as the plague swept away half the population.”

“Linda!” Sherry Lyn said, horrified.

“Oh, Sherry Lyn, I
am
sorry for your loss, but we’ve got to remember that we’re still alive. And if we’ve made it this far, we might just survive this thing all the way. Drink up, ladies!”

Then she looked at Alex, smiled mysteriously and downed her shot in one quick motion.

Feeling as if she were being challenged for some inexplicable reason, Alex did the same.

T
HE TWO MEN HURRIED
toward the church, identified by a sign out front as the Plains Episcopal Church of Hollow Tree.

Cody, alert and ready, strode up the steps with Brendan at his heels. He strong-armed the door—and found that it was securely locked.

“Cody, something’s not right here,” Brendan said. “This is a house of worship. How could a creature like Milo Roundtree have gotten in here?”

“I don’t know, but someone—or something—is in there,” Cody said. “You heard the noise, same as I did.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have started by trying to bang the door down,” Brendan suggested.

“And how else were we supposed to get in?” Cody asked, but privately he was irritated with himself, because who-or
what
ever was in there couldn’t help knowing about their presence by now.

“We could try knocking,” Brendan said.

“Knocking? Why the hell—”

Too late. Brendan had already rapped heavily on the door.

Cody groaned and stepped back. There was a small casement window—stained glass, and bloodred in the sunlight on the second story, directly above the door, and someone was looking out, his identity hidden by the thick colored glass.

The window opened a crack, and to Cody’s amaze
ment, a man in ecclesiastical garments peered out at them. “Who are you?” he demanded.

“My name is Cody Fox, and this is Brendan Vincent,” he said. “We’re trying to hunt down the men who destroyed this town.”

The priest glared at him. “Go out into the street and stand directly beneath the sun.”

They did as ordered.

“This isn’t a great test,” Brendan called out to the man. “They don’t go out a lot in daylight, because they don’t have much strength then. But that doesn’t mean they
can’t
go out during the day.”

Cody elbowed him. “What the hell did you tell him that for?”

“If we lie, he won’t let us in, and it’s important that we talk to the man, don’t you think?” Brendan asked.

But from his vantage point above them, the priest was watching carefully, and he apparently had his own way of determining the truth about their alive-or-dead status.

“I’m coming down,” he said, and the window closed with a snap.

“See? Honesty. It’s the best policy,” Brendan said.

They heard a rasping sound as they walked back up the church steps—evidently something heavy had been blocking the door. A second later, the door opened and the priest, a heavy cross hung around his neck, stared out at them.

He was about thirty years old, blond and blue-eyed, but his features, and the sharpness of his expression, indicated that he was intelligent and had great strength of purpose.

“Come in,” he said.

A small group of people was standing behind the piano
in the nave: a blond boy of about sixteen, a man in his mid-forties, a woman of about sixty, and another who appeared to be in her twenties.

Cody stared at them for a moment, then turned to the priest and asked, “How the hell did you manage to survive?”

Brendan elbowed him. “Cody, this is a church,” he whispered.

That brought a smile to the priest’s lips. “A church in the midst of hell. I prayed that you would come….”

“You prayed that—
we
—would come?” Brendan asked.

“That help would come,” the priest said. He offered his hand. “I’m Father Joseph. Back there we have Timmy Kale, Miss Mona Hart, Mr. Adam Jefferies and Mrs. Alice Springfield, our pianist.”

“How do you do?” Cody and Brendan said in unison, then looked at each other and couldn’t help grinning. The situation was terrifying, but it was also absurd.

And wonderful, Cody thought. Because somehow these people had survived.

“Have you ventured out at all…since this began?” Cody asked.

Father Joseph smiled. “Oh, yes. We’ve run out, but only at high noon. And only to bring back what the general mercantile had in canned food, what smoked meat we could find…to get water, and to raid the closest houses for some bedding.” He paused.

“What about the people who were…killed?” Cody asked.

The priest spoke softly, “We dealt with them,” he said flatly, his tone indicating that it wasn’t something he wanted to discuss further.

“We’ll get you back to Victory today,” Cody said. “In fact, we need to leave as soon as possible.”

“We’re ready when you are. But you might have noticed, we don’t have horses,” he said. “What animals didn’t run off…well, they’re dead….”

“There’s got to be a wagon sitting around somewhere in town,” Cody said.

“There’s a livery down the street. You’ll find something there. It’s not like people realized what was going on in time to get out….” He looked back at the frightened survivors by the piano, then turned back to Cody. “They came at night, like black birds from hell with burning red eyes and…and the result was carnage.”

“And that night, you five were the only ones in here?” Cody asked.

Father Joseph shook his head. “I was in here, praying. Alice was at her piano, practicing for the Sunday service. But the others…a man brought them here as the attack started. A rather strange man. He hesitated at the door, then came in, dragging the others with him. He told me to believe in God and in the church, and to guard those he was leaving in my care. He said that if we had faith, we’d be safe in the church—the demons wouldn’t be able to enter. And I reckon he was right. We’ve been safe, but we’ve also been careful. I’m sure they know we’re here, and I’m sure they’ve been trying to devise a way to get us out.” He smiled grimly at his own ironic choice of words.

“Okay, let’s get right down to the livery, pick out a wagon and get the horses hitched,” Brendan said. “And pray to God those horses will be polite enough not to fight us on the way back over to Victory.”

“Right,” Cody said, still staring thoughtfully at the
priest, wondering about the identity of the man who had brought these people here, then disappeared.

“Cody, the sun won’t stay up forever,” Brendan said.

“Be ready,” Cody told the priest.

“We can walk over there with you now, if you think…if you think it’s safe,” Father Joseph said.

“No, wait here. Brendan and I can manage on our own,” Cody said.

The livery was clear—they had been in it just minutes ago. But he didn’t want to take the chance of having to protect the others any longer than necessary.

He unhitched his horse and strode after Brendan, who had already headed down the street, his horse’s reins in his hands.

“What the hell do you think really went on back there?” Brendan asked, shaking his head. “Who would bring folks to a church, then go back out into the middle of the massacre? Why wouldn’t he have stayed in the church?”

“That’s something we can ask Father Joseph once we get them all back to Victory,” Cody said.

“I’m more interested in finding out how they knew the way to destroy their dead.”

They found a wagon and, with a little searching, harnesses for the horses.

Neither animal seemed enamored of the concept of becoming wagon horses, and they protested with rearing and neighing, but finally the men got the horses hitched together. Brendan led them down the street, getting them adjusted to pulling the wagon as one, stopping in front of the church.

Father Joseph was standing at the door, waiting for them.

He waited for the others to run out to the wagon, then followed, carrying a large portmanteau.

“Father Joseph, we need to travel light,” Cody said.

The priest met his eyes. “My friend, this is filled with holy water and sharpened crosses. I see that you know all about these creatures and are armed against them, and I think it’s a good idea for all of us to have weapons at our disposal, don’t you?”

“You’re right, Father. We’ll find room for your bag,” Cody said.

He looked up to the sky, judging the remaining hours of daylight, as he followed Father Joseph to the wagon. So far, the sky was clear and blue. But night would come, and it was going to take them much longer to return to Victory than it had taken to reach Hollow Tree.

“I’ll drive, you watch?” Brendan suggested.

Cody nodded, and Brendan hiked himself up to the driver’s bench, picking up the reins.

Cody jumped on the back of the wagon, his bow slung over his shoulder.

Father Joseph’s four survivors were silent, huddled together. Cody smiled at the boy—Timmy, the Reverend had said. The boy stared back at him, not blinking.