Johnathan cringed. “No trouble. Really.” He eased a step back from the fellow, who ambled onward and outward into the dark. Johnathan watched him go, contemplating whether to follow him in hopes of the vampire going after such an easy mark. What a coup that would be, to land his target on the first night! The society would be impressed, possibly promote him. But his stomach gave another troublesome grumble, demanding sustenance, and Johnathan suddenly couldn’t remember his last meal. With a bereaved sigh, he headed to the bar, observing the woman behind it.
With a flushed face, she snatched a towel and began swabbing out a glass mug while conversing with a row of grizzled men nursing their ale. The sleeves of her non-nonsense work dress were rolled past her elbows, revealing forearms nearly twice the size of his own.
Johnathan set his bag on the end, politely waiting for the woman’s attention. At least he attempted to politely wait for her attention. But as the minutes dragged and his hunger grew, his good manners frayed.
“Excuse me, madame, might you be the proprietor of this establishment?”
She turned to him then, an appraising glance as she looked over his tailored coat and buffed travel valise. Johnathan was not a wealthy man, but he took fine care of his things, which gave the needed illusion of wealth, one that often eased his interactions with strangers.
“That’d be me,” she answered. “What can I do for a fine gentleman as yourself?”
The hard emphasis on “fine” made him vaguely uncomfortable, as if she sized him up like a prime cut of roast, but Johnathan was damn near ravenous now. A long day of travel and his flight along the coach road left him wanting nothing more than a bowl of hot food and a cot to sleep on.
“Are you also in charge of the boarding house next door?” he asked.
One thick, dark eyebrow rose at the question. Her gaze turned mercenary. “You come to work in the mills, boy?”
From fine gentleman to boy? He bristled at the shift. He’d turned twenty last winter, at least he thought so. He hadn’t lived the kind of life that celebrated such occasions, nor was he certain of his age when the Society took him in. Even still, while he shaved as a requirement of the Society, he felt his features weren’t that youthful. Were they? Johnathan fidgeted with his valise.
He cleared his throat, deepening his voice a notch. “I would like to rent a room, possibly for the month.” He reached into his coat for his allotted funds. “I can pay—”
His fingers met nothing.
Johnathan spun around and scanned the crowded room, panic lancing through him as he came to the unpleasant realization he’d been robbed. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered under his breath.
“What was that you were saying about pay?”
He flinched and turned to find the matron leaning over the bar, so close he had to bite down on the desire to jump back.
“I’m afraid I seem to have misplaced my wallet.”
She squinted into his face with a critical eye. “Why, you really are no more than a lad,” she murmured.
His shoulders hunched up at her words. “Madame, you presume falsely.”
“Do I, now?” She straightened, giving him space to breathe. She folded her arms, her gaze still far too intense for his liking. The matron sucked loudly on a front tooth with a sharp “tch” sound. “Rooms are three dollars for the week, twelve dollars for the month. Tack on an extra five dollars for two meals a day. You can pay me after you collect your wages.”
“But I didn’t intend, that is, I wasn’t set up for the mill—”
“Did you come here to work or not, boy? We have no rooms for dandy prats up from the city.”
Johnathan grit his teeth. Working the mills was the furthest thing from his agenda, and the work would take him away from his mission. “Is there other work I could do, round the bar perhaps?”
The woman pursed her lips, clearly at the end of her patience. She looked to ream into him when a gentleman’s stiff, black top hat landed on the bar, followed by a pair of dove gray gloves.
“I’ll pay for his board, Mrs. Meech,” said a light voice. “Would you be so kind as to bring us both a pint? Oh, and a bowl of that divine stew for the boy.”
Johnathan felt the muscles of his jaw creak as he turned to the stranger. “Thank you, sir, that isn’t necessary. I had this situation well in hand—”
The young man flapped a careless hand at him. “Don’t be daft. She was about to lay you flat. Now shut your mouth and eat before you pass out on me.”
Baffled and unable to think of a decent comeback, Johnathan sat and studied his well-timed savior.
The stranger had to be the most fine-boned man he’d ever seen. He was clearly one of the wealthy mercantile lot that snapped up country estates and emulated the gentry class of the old world. He was also a man of contradictions, like the intermingled patrons of the bar. Despite their location at the rough final strip of the American north, the man wore an impeccably tailored suit. The make and cloth spoke volumes of his wealth. Yet his slicked-back auburn hair, tied in a queue at the nape of his neck, was unfashionably long, making his features more effeminate and highlighting the smooth rounded line of his jaw. That delicate mien was further exacerbated by his elegant hands, which took the pints from Mrs. Meech and placed one in front of Johnathan.
“You’re staring,” said the stranger, meeting his gaze with large gray eyes.
“Why help me?” Johnathan colored, feeling a right fool. Didn’t Dr. Evans impress upon him the importance of befriending and securing the aid of the locals? “My apologies. I am out of sorts.”
The stranger snorted. “I’m an absolute bear when I’m famished,” he said, winking at Johnathan.
The gesture heated the back of Johnathan’s neck. He felt peculiar, sitting next to the beautiful young man.
He cleared his throat. “Thank you for the offer, but I must decline—”
“Now, now, don’t let your mouth run away with you again. Stay, have a bowl of stew, converse with me. You’re new here, yes? Where do you hail from?” The stranger punctuated his questions by sliding a bowl of stew before Johnathan.
The scent invaded his nostrils, crippling his reservations of the odd situation. For a solid minute, he shoveled food into his mouth before he remembered himself, choking down a mouthful at the stranger’s surprised expression.
“I was hungry,” Johnathan said, cheeks burning after that spectacularly ineloquent explanation.
“So it appears,” said the stranger, flagging down Mrs. Meech. “Another bowl if you please, love.”
“Oh no, you don’t have to—”
“I insist,” he said, winking at the older woman, who actually giggled. The beautiful man winked a lot. Perhaps he had a twitch of the eye.
Johnathan took a moment to collect himself and dab bits of stew from around his mouth. He held out a hand to the stranger to properly introduce himself. “Thank you for your hospitality. I’m Johnathan Newman.”
The stranger took his hand, his skin surprisingly hot, almost feverish, though Johnathan dismissed the thought. He was faintly surprised by the callouses that brushed against his own, reassessing his judgment of the man with every new minute.
“Victor, though most round here just call me Vic.”
Johnathan noted the lack of surname, a gesture that was borderline rude, but with a meal in his belly, he was feeling rather benevolent on the subject of country manners. Another bowl of steaming stew slid in front of him. Good manners be damned. He remembered Vic’s other question.
“I’m up by way of Boston,” he said, spooning stew down his gullet.
Vic tapped the side of his mug, still full, as he watched Johnathan eat. “No wonder you don’t want to work in the mills. City lad like you wouldn’t last a day in the woods.”
Johnathan snorted around a chunk of potato. “I’ve worked on the docks, offloading cargo. I think I can handle hauling a few trees.”
“Then why don’t you?”
Johnathan paused,
stew dripping off his spoon. There, he’d talked himself into a corner with so very little effort.
Vic took pity on him and clapped him on the shoulder, his grip stronger than Johnathan expected. “If you’re looking to escape the chaos of the city, there are better locations, John. But if you insist on staying, what employment do you expect to find?”
“I—I don’t know.” Johnathan scowled into the dregs of his stew. So far, he was performing marvelously on his mission, managing to lose his funds and find himself on the outs with room and board. How was he supposed to hunt down the bloody vampire if he was scuttling about the forest, hacking down trees? Not to mention that encounter on the road…
A chill flushed over his skin as he remembered that eerie moment of stillness, the sensation of something unseen hunting him. His spoonful of stew plopped into the bowl with a small splatter.
“You alright, lad?” Vic’s fingers squeezed his shoulder hard enough for the muscle to protest.
“It’s nothing. It’s just that…” Johnathan glanced up as Vic peered at him with those intense gray eyes. Johnathan’s gaze shifted, taking in the rest of the bar. None of the patrons would listen to him rave about the encounter on the road, but something about Vic put him at ease. If he was going to befriend the locals, might as well start with the friendliest of them. This was an opportunity to see how aware of the lurking evil the townsfolk were.
“There was something on the road,” said Johnathan carefully, studying Vic’s reaction, though the man must have been a champion card sharp. His expression gave away nothing, leaving Johnathan hanging off a figurative cliff.
Vic shook himself, as if realizing the predicament he’d created, and rose to fill his role. “Something? Were you robbed on the road?”
Johnathan couldn’t pinpoint what it was—a slight hitch in the man’s voice, a flicker of calculated disinterest—but he felt Vic hung on his every word, waiting for the reveal. People, as a rule, left him uneasy, but he had an uncanny knack, Dr. Evans would say, for catching those subtle gestures and cues.
Johnathan inhaled a breath, catching a faint scent of something floral and fairly musty beneath the stink of smoke and ale. He set his spoon down and turned to fully face Vic. “You know what I saw on the road, don’t you?”
“This is a small settlement, and people talk after enough ale, but no, I don’t.” Vic’s fingers rapped along the top of the bar, a hard staccato drumming as the man took his measure. “Do you know what you saw on the road?”
Johnathan caught a reprieve from answering as a raspy scream broke through the chatter of the bar. A hush fell over the room. The two of them shared a brief wide-eyed glance. Johnathan surged to his feet, Vic on his heels as a cluster of patrons followed the sound, the mass moving with the safety of numbers.
Outside, a heavy darkness blanketed the town, broken by sparsely dotted streetlamps. Johnathan scanned the empty avenue, trying to find the source of the brutal cry, when Vic’s hand landed on his shoulder once more.
“This way,” said Vic, his expression grim.
Johnathan didn’t argue, following the man’s sure steps toward a pitch-black alley roughly half a dozen yards from the boarding house. His eyes failed to adjust before he tripped over the quivering lump of a man between the buildings. Vic caught Johnathan at the elbow, helping him regain his footing. Johnathan’s eyes slowly caught up to the appallingly faint lighting. He quickly wished they hadn’t as he saw the small shape lying crumpled deeper within.
It registered in flashes at first, a dainty shoe off to the side, scattered bits of lace, the long dark curls fanned out and plastered to the ground in a liquid mess. Johnathan focused on the hand outstretched towards him, pale and smooth, slim fingers curled up to reveal buffed nails. He followed the arm down, catching her face, so young, not a woman grown. Her vacant eyes stared up at him, dark stains marring her complexion. Johnathan couldn’t meet those vacant eyes for long, tearing his gaze away to look at the rest of her. The stew soured in his gut.
The girl was torn in half.
Chapter Three
This was not the work of a vampire.
Johnathan wasn’t sure why he was so certain, but the idea sat there, rattling around his skull, unwilling to settle down. The sour-sick feeling in his stomach left the bitter taste of bile in his mouth, but he refused to vomit. Who knew the next time a free meal would come his way? And, Dr. Evans had drilled all the lads to never sully the scene with sick.
Apparently, the other patrons did not adhere to such rules.
The few men from the bar who had followed Johnathan and Vic now stood in the shadows, retching at their own feet. Most were pale and sweaty, calling for a man named Stebbins, who likely operated in capacity of sheriff. More townsfolk arrived, milling about the scene, muttering and plodding around, a constant babbling murmur of distress. Their heat and noise felt stark against the dark death sprawled across the alley ground.
The sounds washed over him, a verbal tide in time to the pounding of his pulse in his ears. The nausea ebbed as the facet of Johnathan’s personality forged in the streets of his childhood slipped its leash. That cool, clinical, calculating half rose to the fore as Johnathan crouched next to the body.
A stillness settled between his shoulders as his other side—the side even the hard-edged veterans of the Society didn’t understand—slowly took in the scene. He focused, until the only sound he heard was the steady beat of his heart. The details of the victim sharpened. Her face was intact, resignation clinging to her lifeless visage.
This killer had no care if her identity was discovered. Odd, when Johnathan factored in the small population of Cress Haven. Fiends were so rare in small towns because they lacked the anonymity of the city. It was why the Society considered this assignment a test run. But the state of her…
As his vision finished adjusting to the light of the sputtering streetlamps, he could see what appeared to be dirt beneath her nails and scrapes on her fingertips. She tried to drag her ruined body out of the alley, which meant she was alive for a time after the attack. Not a quick death but a violent one. Her stomach was torn open; the stink of viscera stung his nostrils, but he ignored it. His gaze shifted, studying the dark wet mass, attempting to discern what the shredded remains could be and what was missing.
Her attacker ripped something from her while she was alive and left her to the cruelty of a slow death. Johnathan’s jaw clenched. It was an inhuman kill. That is what bothered him the most. The Society liked to believe all vampire kills were brutal and violent, but there were many vampires who remembered they had once been human. The bodies they left behind hinted at guilt and mercy.
This monster had no memory of humanity.
Johnathan’s gaze wandered, searching, until he found what he was looking for. He plucked it from the pool of blood at the girl’s savaged stomach. With an exaggerated flap, Johnathan drew out his handkerchief and covered his mouth. He gave a coughing retch, transferring the object into the cloth, before carefully tucking his prize into his pocket.
He looked up to find Vic staring right at him.
Johnathan tensed, waiting for a reaction, but the moment broke with the arrival of “Stebbins”. The patrons parted for a burly little man, his beer-rounded belly leading the way. He’d rolled up to the scene in a rickety open cart pulled by a sad-looking nag.
“My, my. What a mess.” He crossed himself and spat. The gesture seemed off for a lawman, but the tape measure in the man’s hand truly confused Johnathan. The portly little fellow knelt in a pool of blood, mindless as it soaked his trousers, while he measured the body.
Johnathan glanced at the others. Surely this wasn’t expected behavior for a lawman, even in the country, where professions blended into one another? Was he the town’s coroner? Aside from the careless cross gesture, Stebbins appeared completely unaffected by the state of the body, though the gruesome manner of death and the age of the victim couldn’t be a commonplace occurrence out here. Vic met his gaze, a si
ngle haughty eyebrow raised. Johnathan quickly looked away; the muscles of his jaw clenched. There was nothing for it. He had to ask, even if it drew unwanted attention to himself.
“Pardon me, sir, why are you measuring the body?”
Stebbins startled, as if Johnathan had shouted in his ear. His knee slid further into the gore. Wasn’t he aware of Johnathan’s presence? How could he not be? Did this man realize how badly he’d compromised the scene? Johnathan itched to intervene before further evidence was lost to Stebbins’ clumsy actions.
The portly man blinked at him. “Why? It’s my job, boy,” he said, flustered. He frowned and glanced down, finally noticing his knee as it inched toward a knot of intestines. “Oh bother, my best trousers!”
Johnathan gaped. Stebbins remained unaware of the attention, muttering on about his ruined pants and the inconvenience of collecting bodies in the dark. This man was not a coroner or any other officer of the law. He was a glorified grave keeper, here to measure the girl’s remains for a pine box.
“But what about an investigation?” he said. “To determine the cause of death?”
Stebbins made a face. “Might be due to her guts hanging out, I’d say.”
A muscle twitched behind Johnathan’s left eye. Where was the law in this town? Cress Haven was at the edge of the wilderness, but it had to have some sort of office, if only to resolve disputes and keep matters civil. If there was no lawman, who’d reported the presence of a vampire here to the Society? How were any of these gawking rubes aware of the Society to send word?
A hand settled on his shoulder, slender fingers that curled to his collarbone. He’d failed to notice Vic move up behind him, a terrible misstep, preoccupied as he was by Cress Haven’s apparent lawless state.
“Once the undertaker removes the body, the townsfolk will elect someone to investigate,” Vic explained in a low voice.
Johnathan glanced at the gathered crowd, who clearly didn’t have the common sense to seek safety. They gaped and gasped but clearly wanted nothing to do with eradicating such violence. He’d seen this sort of reaction in Boston, perverse spectators drawn like flies to a body, willing to flit and buzz but altogether useless. There was something almost comical in their disaffection and unexpected in what he thought would be such a close-knit population.
A Bargain of Blood and Gold Page 2