“Pleased to do my part. How are you set?”
“I’m fine with the Colt, but I’ll need a box more for the derringer.”
“All right. You’re leaving on this mission soon?”
“Tomorrow night.” Lawson glanced at the hands on the clock. “Tonight, I mean.”
“What you need will be ready for you by sundown. Shall I have it sent to the hotel?”
Lawson nodded. That was the usual arrangement.
“Is there anything else I can help you with?”
Lawson thought about it. He looked at the crucifix above the mantel, and again his eyes watered and burned. He had not been very religious before his conversion, but now he longed for the healing touch and mercy of God yet he felt so distant from it. He considered that this feeling grew stronger in the vampire tribe until it became pure rage toward anything Good in this universe. He pulled his gaze away from the Cross. “I may need,” said Lawson after another moment, “something else. Let me think. I’m going walking in awhile, by the river. I’ll write you what I need before dawn and have the note sent to you in the morning.”
“All right. I’ll do what I can.”
That was all Lawson could ask. Both of them knew he might not come back from this nest of the Dark Society called Nocturne. But both of them also knew he had no choice but to go.
He stood up and retrieved his black Stetson. “Thank you, Father,” he said quietly. “As always…your help is much appreciated. I’ll leave you now.”
Father Deale stood up as well. He reached out and touched Lawson’s shoulder, then drew his hand back because the vampire in the room had flinched slightly. “You’re in pain?”
“Bruises,” said Lawson. He smiled grimly. “But yes…always in pain.” He waited for the priest to open the door. He took one more look at the crucifix, held it as long as he could, and then looked away. “Thank you, John,” he said.
“I’ll pray for you.”
“Pray for a young woman named Eva Kingsley,” Lawson answered, putting the Stetson on his head. “Pray for her soul and her sanity. Good morning to you.” He started to go out, but a thought—a question—occurred to him that caused him to hesitate. He frowned, staring into the priest’s dark brown eyes. “Do you think I’m the only one who fights back?”
Father Deale took a moment in replying. “I think,” he said, “you’re the only one who fights back who has survived so long. That’s why they so desperately want you destroyed.” Lawson went out the door, onto the path that led through the garden, and into the night.
He walked at a human pace, a solitary figure no longer absolutely human.
The night was his territory, his world, his blessing. It was also his grief and his prison. Away from the glare of the sun that hurt the eyes and burned the flesh, he was aware of the perfume of the night breezes, the stillness of the dark, the protection he enjoyed between the hours of dawn and dusk. This was his time, yet he longed to walk in the daylight and to witness the sun’s movement. How he missed the shadows of midday! His flesh could not bear such fierce fire, even on a cloudy day. His rhythm and habits now were dictated by the creature within, the monster that LaRouge had created. He was a construction still of heart and lungs, of bone and muscle. Yet he felt his humanity drifting away from him, night after night. When he drew the black curtains shut across the windows of his suite at the Hotel Sanctuaire and lay in the bed that was also draped with black curtains, he thought he might as well be positioning himself in a grave. He was always cold. He could never fully rest. Some part of himself reviled the other. He was caught in the midst of transformation, knowing that over time he would lose all his humanity and become a creature of blood need, not caring who he had to slaughter to get it. His body was changing; the strength and quickness were welcome attributes, yes, but it was in small things that he realized he was on a certain path to becoming a monster. He could still drink a little wine and liquor, but straight water made him sick. He peed maybe a shot glass full of murky brown liquid every few days. Food turned his stomach. He would never have believed, in his previous life, that he could have tracked his progress from man through the deepening clutches of vampirism by how little he pulled the chain on his toilet.
He was dying, of course. Becoming one of them, totally and truely, was a death in life. But he couldn’t give up; he couldn’t lie down in that grave and let them win. It was not in the nature of a captain of the Nineteenth Alabama Infantry Regiment, who had both taken blood and shed blood at the battle of Shiloh. It was not in the nature of Trevor Lawson, once a young Alabama lawyer and a valued husband and father.
He walked the night. He walked along the curve of the Mississippi. He walked through the silent streets of early morning, as he pondered the future. By the time he returned to the Hotel Sanctuaire, went to the front desk and wrote Garrison, the night clerk, a note to be delivered to Father John Deale at the Church of the Apostle St. Simon, the sun was a faint blush in the eastern sky. Lawson stood outside as long as he could, watching the light strengthen. Then he pulled his hat down low over his eyes and went up the stairs to his room, where he double-locked the door, closed the heavy black window curtains, took off his clothes and settled his pale naked body upon the bed. His bruises would fade quickly; they always did. He drew the black curtains around the bed and by habit touched the ebony leather-tooled gunbelt with the two backward-holstered Colt .44s that lay next to his right side. Now he could sleep.
Before he drifted off into dreams of again walking in the hot summer sun, his shadow striding in front of him like a taunt, Lawson heard the first of the street-vendors down on Conti Street begin their distinctive morning calls. It was a woman, calling in a musical sing-song voice, “Apples, sweet apples, apples for sale.”
Lawson reluctantly let go of his hold on the daytime world. He sank away, in his soft grave beyond the curtains black.
Four.
On the road to St. Benadicta, astride his muscular chestnut horse Phoenix, Lawson listened to the sounds of the night and warily scanned the forest beneath the brim of his black Stetson.
He wore a black suit, a white shirt and a crimson waistcoat. At his waist was the ebony holster with the two backward-facing Colt .44s. The Colt on the right had a rosewood grip and the Colt on the left had a grip formed of yellowed bone. Each pistol held six slugs. The gun on the right side held regular lead bullets, while the one on the left did not.
The moon was a white scythe above the treetops. Phoenix moved at a brisk walk. Lawson figured another couple of hours to St. Benadicta. If his estimation of speed and distance was correct, he would be beating daybreak by about an hour. There would be the problem of shelter; there always was that problem, but Lawson had solved it many times before. In his saddlebags were two folded-up black curtains, thick enough to wrap himself up in and have a comfortable outdoor sleep if he could find a suitable slice of shadow that didn’t move too much. Usually there was a room available, for enough money. And he never slept like the dead anyway; if anyone burst the lock and got into his room with evil intent, even in midday, they wouldn’t be leaving the same way they’d entered .
He listened to the churrings and clicks and rustlings of the nighttime forest, as Phoenix continued along the trail leading southwest into the bayou country. Lawson was alert but relaxed; he was confident in his ability to survive, yet he knew not to push his luck.
He had what he needed. Father Deale had been resourceful. Now it was up to Lawson to see things through. Tonight, before he’d left New Orleans, he’d had a further insight into the priest’s desire to help him. A letter had come to the Hotel Sanctuaire with the requested package.
Lawson, the letter had begun in smoothly flowing blue handwriting. I expect you’ll find good use for these. I hope you’ll return in one piece, along with the young woman. God protect her soul, I pray she’s survived. I wanted to tell you that I consider it an act of God that you came to me in confession that night. I’ve told you about my time in Blancmortain
, when I was married and a teacher in the school there. I’ve told you about the people who were found dead in that summer of 1838, drained of blood with the fang bites at their throats. What I’ve not told you, and what I choose to tell you now, is that in addition to the ten who were murdered in that fashion, four others disappeared. Among them was my wife, Emily. She came home one night at the end of that summer, Lawson. She came to my window, and she begged to come in because she was so cold. I almost let her in…almost. She was a wretched sight, half-naked, dirty and blighted and her face dark with dried blood. By that time they were feasting on other towns. By that time I knew what she was…what she’d been turned to. When I refused to let her in, Emily cursed me. No demon could voice the curses she threw at me. No horror could be more horrible than that, because Emily had been pregnant with our child and now she was a thin, ragged nightmare. It went on and on, until the sun came up. I packed and left that day. I am a different man now, because some of the man I used to be stayed in Blancmortain, holding hard to a crucifix he took off the wall. He is suffering there still, in that little house where no one dares live.
I know what used to be my Emily is still out upon the world. She may be with the others in Nocturne, or she may be in another town far from there, living like an animal and a monster. But I have hope for you, Lawson, and if I have hope for you I also can find some hope for Emily. That she can come back to me, as she was before? Hardly. She will always be twenty years old. Isn’t that the most terrible joke, Lawson? That if survives on blood, she will always be young? My hope for you is that you can find your way back to humanity. My hope for her is that she can be released from that existence, and die in the grace of God. I want you to release her if you find her, Lawson. If you can. I want you to do this for me, and for her. You do the mercy, and I will take care of the grace. For all three of us, suffering as we are.
God be with you, Lawson. I know you travel by night. He does too.
And the missive was signed, Your friend, John.
Phoenix went on. The moon moved across the sky. The forest pulsed with life unseen, though Lawson caught the occasional shape of an animal out in the dark. The ground was still firm, not yet swampy. Above his head the canopy of trees blotted out the stars. Lawson had the small oil-painted portrait of Eva Kingsley—painted two years ago, when she was seventeen—in his head; he would know her when he saw her, if she was not much changed.
Forward…
He was drowsing a bit, letting Phoenix lead the way. He could smell the damp of morning in the sultry air.
Forward, Nineteenth Alabama…!
And just that fast, it was upon him.
It had been a confused meeting of weary soldiers, on that early evening of April 6th, 1862, with the sun sinking down over the bloody forest and fields of Shiloh and the red-tinged Owl Creek swamp. “Forward, Nineteenth Alabama!” had been the cry sent up by a young Confederate captain who’d been a lawyer not so long before, but who had enlisted to do his duty for the Southland, been trained and stationed at Mobile for three months. He and his men had first seen the “elephant” this morning, as the grays attacked the blues to push them back into the swamp’s embrace. The day’s fighting had been long and brutal. Captain Lawson had already received the graze of a rifle ball across the meat of his right shoulder and a hole in his hat. The balls sounded like hornets as they passed, a deadly hum and whine that ended with the cries of many young men falling to their knees with their brains spilling out or the blood pooling where they lay. Waves of gunsmoke floated through the trees. In some places soldiers were nearly face-to-face in the deepening gloom before they recognized the colors of the enemy and pulled their triggers or swung their swords. Forward went the men of the Nineteenth Alabama, and forward to meet them in the darkening thickets came the men in Union blue.
Shots erupted along the ragged line. Fire and sparks flew into the tormented air. Lawson squeezed off a shot from his Navy Colt and was answered by a rifle slug that nearly kissed the right side of his face. Cannonfire boomed in the distance, cavalry horses shrieked and fell, and with his next step Lawson found himself boot-deep in a young soldier’s entrails as the Union soldier sat on his knees and tried dazedly to push the red coils back in where they belonged.
“On the left! Riders on the left!” someone shouted. Lawson saw the enemy cavalry coming from that direction between the trees, sabers carving the air. He got off a shot and saw a man in an officer’s uniform grasp at his throat and topple. The rebel soldier three feet to Lawson’s left lost the top of his head to a gleaming saber, and Lawson fired into the rider’s face but the horse was quickly past him and gone.
“Forward! Forward!” Lawson shouted, but what they were going forward to he did not know. Those were the orders. Forward, ever forward, and not a step back until the Yanks are neck-deep in the Owl Creek swamp. This day and now into the dusk he had seen carnage beyond his imagining. He had thrown up his guts, but at least they were still in his body.
Over the riflefire and shouting and the sound of horses and men being killed he heard the cannons speak in their deadly tongues of flame, and suddenly the blasts began on all sides. Plumes of dirt and broken rocks shot into the air. “Forward!” Lawson hollered, but he knew no one could hear. He staggered onward, with maybe a dozen of his men around him, and with a few paces taken they broke through the burning underbrush and into a hail of Union lead.
Soldiers fell to Lawson’s left and right. One man grabbed at his arm as he went down, shot through the lung and bubbling blood. Lawson fired into the haze of smoke, the Colt kicking in his grip. A fierce pain stabbed his right thigh above the knee and stole his breath. A second slug hit him squarely in the left shoulder and knocked him back. He fell into the thicket of vines and thorns, and there he lay as the battle raged around him, his lungs hitching and his vision fading in and out. He told himself to get up, to rejoin the fight, and as he tried a body fell across him and pinned him down. Horses without riders thundered past. The cannons spoke again from a distance, and once more the earth exploded.
In this maelstrom of death and destruction Trevor Lawson sank down into what felt like a hole lined with velvet black. His eyes closed, and his body shivered as he slept.
He awakened in the dark, with the sounds of pain around him. He smelled blood and sulphur. The murmurs of wounded and dying men rose up from the forest like whispered hymns. Occasionally someone cried out or sobbed. Lawson could no longer hear the noises of battle. The cannons were silent. Frogs croaked from bloodied ponds and crickets chirped in the gore-smeared weeds. Lawson felt the throbbing pain of his bullet wounds. He thought his left shoulder might be broken, for he couldn’t move that arm. He was aware that he yet gripped hard to the Colt. Was it still loaded? He didn’t know. The body that lay across him twitched. Lawson could smell whiskey on the man’s mouth. Confederate or Yank, he knew not, but the man was still breathing. Also the wounded soldier had a beard like the pride of a hog’s bristle-brush. Lawson needed to push the man off, to roll him over, anything to get free. With one working arm it was going to be difficult. The man muttered something that sounded like Lemons, Rolly in his delirium, and Lawson wanted to say Get off me, you damned fool.
He was aware, then, that there was movement among the fallen soldiers.
There was no light. No candle-lit lanterns searching for those who might survive the night, to be loaded onto wagons and taken to the field hospital. There was no light, but there was movement.
Lawson turned his head to the left as much as he could. He could barely breathe with this bearded ox lying across him. He narrowed his eyes, scanning the dark. Yes…someone was moving among the bodies. More than one, it appeared. The figures were nearly blurred, moving like ghosts yet they were not spirits of the dead, for Lawson saw them crouch down and they became solid enough in their stillness. He counted five, and possibly there were more he could not see. He thought they might be camp followers looking for their lovers, for indeed three were women in long and
dirtied gowns. He started to call out for help, to proclaim I am alive, but before he could summon the breath to speak…
…someone reached down and wrenched the bearded ox’s head backward. Lawson saw long clawlike fingernails caked with dirt. The bearded man’s throat was exposed; his eyelids fluttered, as if he were awakening from his wounded slumber. Then suddenly there were two figures crouching down on either side, a man and a woman both thin and wild-haired. The man wore a mud-stained dark suit, the woman a dirty light-colored gown with what appeared to be fabric roses at the bosom.
Lawson saw the woman open her mouth wide, and wider still. Something unhinged in the jaw and the lower teeth thrust forward. Two curved fangs descended from the upper teeth, and in a blurred rush of desperation of need or hunger she bit into the bearded man’s throat on one side while the man’s descended fangs plunged into the other side. Their eyes burned red at the centers, as if embers glowed there from the hearth of Hell.
Their bodies shuddered. The bearded man’s eyes opened and rolled backward in his head to show the whites. His face contorted in silent agony. The two creatures continued to feed from his throat, making slurping and sucking noises. Tendrils of blood ran. The male creature’s hand drifted out and stroked the woman’s tangled hair, as if this moment was the essence of the greatest love between them.
Lawson made a noise. Maybe it was a gasp of shock or a whine of horror, he didn’t know. But in the next instant the red-centered eyes of the two things were upon him, and as they pulled away from the offered throat blood drooled from their fangs. They sat on their haunches, observing him as one might observe a nice piece of juicy steak, the next object of their banquet.
With the cold sweat of fear on his face Lawson lifted his right arm, cocked the Colt and fired a bullet into the male creature’s forehead.
I Travel by Night Page 3