White Devil Mountain (13 page)

What now?
Vera’s eyes seemed to say as she looked at him accusingly.

“That presence—oh, those guys completely slipped my mind. Damn it!” His narrowed eyes were turned toward the faint gloom over the distant snowfield. Everyone focused their eyes on it.

A hundred yards off, there were indeed shapes moving around.

“The mountain folk.” And having said that, Crey gave a sickly groan. Dust had elbowed him in the gut.

“You don’t have to spell everything out for us. We know.”

Indeed. They all knew the score. Anyone who lived in this world did. But for the briefest of times, the eternal and immutable truth had slipped from their minds: those whom the Nobles fed upon became creatures like the Nobility. Vampires. They were coming. The group that had been devils among men had been transformed into demons of the night.

“That can’t be. There might be a shadow over the sun, but it’s still daytime!”

Vera’s assertion was correct, but the figures in white who forgot all about concealing themselves would make a liar out of her.

III

“Here they come!” Crey grinned.

“You’re looking pretty happy about this,” said Dust.

“Damn straight. Fakes or not, now that these clowns are like the Nobility, they won’t use their ranged weapons and chameleon suits. To show off their immortality, they’ll come at us freakin’ bare handed! That suits me just fine. Look after the woman and the kid, okay?”

“You’re feeling pretty full of yourself.”

“Hey, leave this to me.”

A slender gleam appeared in Crey’s right hand. It was the same Deadman’s Blade that even D had wanted to see—would it now demonstrate whether its reputation was deserved?

“But it’s daytime—how can they be out in the sunlight?” Vera asked.

“Hold that thought. I’ll catch one and ask him for you,” Crey replied cheerfully, stepping forward.

Dressed in white, the mountain folk advanced on him as if they were wading through oncoming surf. Weathered by the sun, yet deathly pale, their faces were those of ghosts. Their lips alone were strangely crimson, and the stark incisors that peeked from them were those of the Nobility—the fangs of a vampire. Noble and pseudo-Noble alike suffered from a hunger that would not be sated for all eternity. Having spotted four victims with warm blood in their veins, they had saliva dripping from the corners of their mouths, and their teeth gnashed as they reached out their hands and dashed toward Crey.

“Mr. Crey!” Lourié cried out to him.

Crey had expected as much. “Relax. Nothing to worry about here!”

“No, I was just going to ask you not to kill too many people.”

“You little dope. We’re dealing with lackeys of the Nobility. On top of that, they mean to make us like them. It’s kill or be killed.”

“But—they’re human beings.”

“They
were
human beings, dummy.”

“I don’t think it’s very nice to go around calling people stupid at the drop of a hat.”

Crey had to desperately fight the urge to scream.
I’m about to unleash hell with my knife to protect this squirt?
he thought.

Something whooshed past his cheek. One of his foes’ arrows.

“Son of a bitch!”

Bracing himself low, he prepared to jump.

Up ahead of him, the men in white tumbled backward, one after another. They had to be twenty or thirty feet away, at most. Gnarled fingers clawed at the air with eternal curses, and bright blood spilled from mouths vainly opening and closing. The white snow beneath their fallen bodies was swiftly stained crimson. The fact that they were still looking all around was proof that they didn’t know their attacker’s position. And they were all being taken down.

The four people could only gaze in mute surprise at the arrow vanes jutting from the hearts of the fallen. They had an ally with a bow in the area. And said ally was absolutely deadly with it! Nearly ten foes had been eliminated in as many seconds, and each had been pierced through the heart with a single shot. That didn’t seem the sort of thing any ordinary—or respectable—human could do. After all, the snowstorm still raged.

The second the mountain folk had begun to fall, Crey had shouted, “Hit the deck!” and lain flat on the ground. Though he wasn’t the kind of man to flinch from any foe, he had no way of knowing how accurate the mysterious shooter was.

“Where are they?” Crey inquired, though even he didn’t know whom he expected to answer.

“Dad?” Lourié cried out. As if he had been struck dumb for precisely this reason, the boy got up and looked all around, unable to contain his explosion of emotion. “Dad! Is that you, Dad?”

Before the kid could start jumping about, the guardsman pushed him back to the ground, and he too looked all around as he said, “Did you say it was your dad?” Dust’s narrow eyes went wide.

“Are you sure, Lourié?” Vera asked as she crawled closer. “I haven’t heard much about your father—was he a huntsman?”

“That’s right. It must be him. My father saved us.”

The boy was trying to get up again as if he’d lost his mind, but Dust kept one hand on him to hold him down.

“Simmer down. Does your dad have the kind of skill we saw just now?”

“He does.”

“Calm down,” Dust said, putting strength behind his arm. Lourié’s body stiffened, and the pain cleared his head. “That’s not the work of a mortal man. Is your dad some kind of monster?”

“No.” Lourié had taken a few seconds to reply.

“Then something other than a human must’ve saved us. You know why?” Moving only his head, Dust looked at the doctor and the outlaw. Both shook their heads. Dust said to the boy, “I don’t know, either. And so it might be that the shooter wasn’t necessarily out to help us.”

“What then?”

At the boy’s nervous query, Dust gave him a friendly slap on one feeble shoulder. “Maybe they wanted to keep all the food for themselves.”

“I agree,” Crey said, raising his right hand like a schoolboy, while Vera gave him a scathing look.

“It’s too soon to say for sure. Perhaps they have some reason for not wanting us to see them.”

Crey snorted derisively. “So, we’ve got ourselves a bashful little ally? If there were anyone like that around, we’d have long since caught wind of it. First off, how would they even survive up here on the mountain?”

“The mountain folk get by,” said Vera.

“Those clowns aren’t even human anymore. Snow hares and snow panthers I could see, but they eat bewilderers and beast shrooms, making ’em half monster themselves! And they eat human flesh, too. Human flesh!”

“Oh, stop it!” the doctor scolded him, no longer able to restrain herself, and the outlaw actually buttoned his lip. “Have they gone?”

Telling the boy to stay put, Dust got to his feet. Crey was still lying flat against the ground.

“That was close. Do you suppose they ran off?”

“Whoever it was killed off all the white suits. Would’ve known where we were from the very start. If they’d wanted to, they’d have punched every one of our tickets.”

“Good point,” Vera conceded, grabbing the nearby Crey by the elbow.

“What do you want?”

“Get on your feet already. A man’s supposed to look out for women and children, isn’t he?”

“For your information, I’m an outlaw,” Crey said, baring his teeth. “My main gig is bodyguarding, but I do some killing on the side. I’ve got thirty counts against me, and I’m proud of it. If they ever catch me, I’m looking at the death penalty a dozen times, minimum. A person in my line doesn’t look out for women and children.”

“Nothing on this mountain has anything to do with your
line
. There are just men, women, and children up here. And if you’re a man, you can’t just leave the weak to fend for themselves, can you?”

“I don’t wanna hear
weak
this and
weak
that out of you. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s skirts like you who’re all high and mighty when it suits you, then turn around and play the weak-little-female card.”

“That’s a woman’s prerogative. Stop your complaining.”

“At any rate, we’re safe now. Let’s set up the tents.”

Dust’s words spelled the end of their quarrel.

The snow blew wildly into their faces. Now that the living dead had been picked off, a new specter of death had come to spread its wings.

The refuge hadn’t proved of any use. Although Lilia had hit the switch as soon as she jumped, the refuge had been assailed by a ferocious cross breeze that tore it from her grasp. On top of that, though she’d landed feet first in a heavy covering of snow, her right foot had been sprained by the rocks below, and it didn’t look like she’d be able to stand anytime soon. Even here at the bottom of the ravine, the wind and snow blew just as hard. Lilia wasn’t rattled. Her winter coat was still in good shape, and though the refuge had eluded her, once she tracked it down, she’d have sufficient food and medicine. She’d even be able to perform a simple medical procedure.

“Guess I’ll see how well I handle the cold until I get this foot fixed.”

She looked up. The sky was already tinged with darkness, allowing her to make out nothing save the whiteness of snow. Suddenly a chill ran down her spine. Not fear, but a physical phenomenon that was enough to invite it. She was cold.

Her eyes raced to the control panel on the left breast of her coat. The temperature read zero. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought the shock of the fall had probably caused the device to malfunction.