Lawson rowed his skiff through the opening into the diseased mansion, and after a short hesitation to confirm her courage the young woman rowed in after him.
Lawson looked up the staircase. It opened into a larger chamber above. He took his saddlebags, got out of his boat and stepped onto the nearest and dryest riser, which sagged under his weight. He helped Ann out. They stood on the rotten stairs peering up. Ann’s Remington was gripped in her hand. Lawson was ready to draw a pistol at any second.
A figure holding a double-wicked candleabra came through the doorway and stood at the top of the stairs. It was a girl maybe sixteen or seventeen years old—at least in appearance…wearing a moldy green gown. She had long blonde hair and an attractive oval face and she smiled at them as if they were precious to her. “Come up!” she urged. “Oh, do come up!”
Lawson spent a moment tying their boats to the bannister. He felt Ann shiver at his side. He looked into her face and felt the warmth of her blood pulling at him; he could almost hear her heartbeat, and the rush of the delicious fluid through her veins. “Listen to me,” he said tersely. “Stay beside me. If one gets too close, shoot it in the head…whatever it looks like: man, woman or child.”
“Ya’ll come on up here this instant!” said the young girl, with a born-to-the-plantation petulance. And then, to whomever was beyond the chamber’s entrance: “He’s brought us a pretty!”
“Oh…my God…” Ann whispered.
Too late for that, Lawson thought. Way damned too late.
For the vampire gunslinger and his pretty, it was time to join the party. He started up the rotten staircase, which trembled beneath him. Ann got herself moving, and together they ascended toward the gathering.
Nine.
“We’ve been waitin’ for you!” said the blonde female with a fierce grin, as Lawson and Ann reached the top of the stairs. At closer range, her eyes were sunken in and glinted with red in the candlelight and the front of her dress was dark with dried blood. Lawson could feel Ann shrinking back.
“Steady,” he told her, as much for himself as anyone. They were both a long way from home.
The music was becoming more frantic and ragged. Within the chamber that stood before them, candles burning on wall sconces illuminated the figures at this demonic festival, their shadows thrown large upon the moldy green walls. To the tune of vampire musicians playing two fiddles, a bass violin and a pair of tambourines, the gathering danced and whirled across the rot-stained boards, some moving so fast they were only ghostly blurs. By Lawson’s quick count, there were between thirty and forty creatures of the night at this fandango. There was nearly an equality of men and women of various ages in appearance, yet Lawson knew appearances could be deceiving in this regard. A few pallid children clung to the legs of what might be their mothers, indicating a sorry and sad history for that particular family. The women in their dirty gowns twirled and the men in their mud-stained suits pranced back and forth. Eyes that sparked red in the light of the flickering tapers were aimed quickly in the direction of Lawson and his charge, and just as quickly averted.
The young blonde vampire leaned forward to sniff Ann’s hair. Ann cringed away with a start and brought her six up into firing position. The girl laughed and snatched the dark green jockey’s cap from Ann’s head. Putting it on her own head, the less-than-human creature darted away to join the dancers, the speed of her departure blowing the tapers dead in her candleabra.
“I neglected to tell you,” said Lawson, “how fast they…we…are. Take a good long look. You may never see such a sight again.” If you live after seeing this one, he thought grimly.
The music urged the vampire dancers to further exertions. As they spun around the chamber, in which mounted upon the walls were rotten gray tapestries that had become part of the decor of swamp decay and twisted vines that had burst their way through from the outside, they became almost indistinguishable from each other, their blood-fed bodies merging one with another in the blurring of their motion.
Lawson smoked his cigar and watched the dancers. He was aware that at the center of the chamber, and at the center of the ring of bodies, was a single chair. And in that chair was roped the body of a woman, dressed in dirty clothes, with a black hood over her head. The head was slumped forward, the body slack.
“Is that…Eva?” Ann whispered. “Dead?”
“I don’t know,” Lawson answered, though he expected the worst. The Dark Society was not going to allow any of them to walk out of here.
The blonde female vampire who wore Ann’s cap suddenly came out of the ring, grinning and whirling around and around like a human top. She got up close to Ann and stopped her motion, and she smelled Ann’s hair and neck and in the next instant her body shivered with desire and her mouth opened wide. Her lower jaw unhinged, the fangs slid out and her eyes of cornflower blue flamed with bloodneed as she gripped the back of Ann’s neck and thrust her mouth toward the woman’s throat.
Before Ann could react, Lawson shot the creature in the side of her head. The noise of the shot made the music abruptly skreech to a halt and the ring of dancers froze in their steps. As the blonde vampire staggered back, her mouth open in an O of shock and her body already beginning to break apart and burn from the inside out, Lawson calmly plucked the jockey’s cap from the thing’s head. He gave it to Ann, and said, “Ready your six, but don’t move.”
The vampire’s long blonde hair caught fire and sizzled away in a matter of seconds. Her face rippled and turned black as it burned. She clutched at her throat as if recalling the moment of her turning, and as she spun around and around in a mad and agonized parody of the dance her eyes sank inward and burst into black pools that bubbled and smoked before they became dried craters, her burned facial features imploded, and her head began to wither like a grape left out in the blazing sun. From the ruin of the mouth and the collapsing throat came a piercing scream of rage. Lawson had heard such a scream before, but he knew this sight and this sound must be nearly knocking Ann to her knees. With the passage of four more seconds, an empty green gown stained dark with old blood fell upon a pile of ashes and a pair of ashy brown shoes.
Silence ruled.
It was broken by someone clapping.
“Impressive!” said a man from amid the ring. “Im…pressive!” He continued clapping as he came forward, easily, without fear, from the throng. “I had heard you had a weapon that…shall we say…gave you an advantage, but this…ah, quite a show!”
“Thank you,” Lawson replied. He kept his drawn Colt, the one with the grip of yellow bone, ready at his side. “Would you like to see another example of it?”
“No need! Let’s just call it a nice magic trick, eh?” He stopped and spread his arms wide. “Well, brother Lawson…how do you like my town?”
“A little damp,” said Lawson. “A little musty. I think it’s just a matter of time before it slides into the swamp.”
“True,” Christian Melchoir replied. He frowned, and with a toe of a black boot prodded at the empty green gown and the ashes of a dead vampire. “Painfully true. But it won’t happen this night! This night…we celebrate!”
“Celebrate what?”
“Your homecoming. Your chance to rejoin your tribe, sir. And look, you’ve brought us a peace offering. Musicians!” Melchoir turned toward them. “Please keep playing! Everyone, dance as you like! We are here to bring brother Lawson back into our fold, so please…make him feel welcome!” As the musicians began scratching out a tune again, Melchoir grinned at his new guests. “Did you tell this blood-puppet everything? Did you prepare her? Oh, that must have been quite the moment!”
Lawson was content to say nothing and smoke his cigar. He was taking stock of Christian Melchoir. The man was tall and lean and dressed in a swamp-stained gray suit with a dark blue shirt and a lighter blue paisley waistcoat. He appeared to be about twenty-five years old, his pale face smooth and unlined. He had curly black hair and a high-cheekboned face with a long angular nose
and a cleft in his chin. His grin was ferocious and hungry, his eyes cool gray under gracefully-arched eyebrows. He gazed from Lawson to Ann and back again, as a few of the vampires continued their dance around the woman in the chair and the others watched the confrontation with a nervous interest, for the sudden extermination of the blonde vampire had served to focus their attention on a small item of mortality they had forgotten about in their present condition.
“Well,” said Lawson, as he blew smoke into the steamy air. “I’ve come to pay you the ransom you requested. First I want to see Eva’s face.”
“We’ll get to that, if you insist upon it.”
“I want Eva back.” Ann aimed her Remington at Melchoir’s head. The gun was miraculously steady, though her voice was certainly not. “I want her untied now.”
“Tell your pretty,” said Melchoir with a fixed smile, “that she does not give orders here. And please lower that gun before anyone else is damaged.” He motioned toward someone amid the watchers. A bald, big-shouldered and barrel-chested vampire in a filthy white shirt and black trousers walked a few steps to Eva’s side, slid a derringer from his pocket and placed the little pistol’s barrel against her right temple. The body stirred and the head gave a startled jerk.
“She has come to no harm yet,” Melchoir went on. “We want you, Lawson. Of course you know that. Very brave of you to come here, but why bring a blood-puppet?”
“She’s the girl’s sister. I couldn’t stop her.”
“Not so good with the powers of persuasion then, are you?” Melchoir came forward two more paces before he stopped again, warily eyeing Ann’s six-shooter and Lawson’s Colts, the one in his hand and the other still holstered. “We have thirty-eight of us here tonight,” he offered. “Um…pardon me, thirty-seven now. Do you have that many of those magic bullets in your guns? I don’t think so. You can destroy some of us, surely. But…” He opened his mouth wide to show his fangs, which were particularly large and curved. “These will win,” he said when the fangs had slid back into their sockets again. “Eventually, they will win everything.”
“First you built a town that slid into the muck. Now you want to build a world?”
“We want to keep our Society alive and…healthy, so to speak. That means…well, you know what it means.”
Lawson did. It meant the blood hunts by night and the destruction of one farmhouse family after another…and the destruction of one small town after another…and more and more, until…when?…the end of time? He spewed out a slow crawl of smoke. “That’s where you and I differ,” he said. He took stock of the chamberful of vampires, as the music continued to play and the dancers ringed around the girl in the chair. There were too many to shoot; even as fast as he was, he couldn’t kill them all. He thought: If you’re gonna jump into that fryin’ pan…
“My town,” said Melchoir. “Our world. You can still be part of it, Lawson. There’s no need for your dubious quest.”
“There’s a need.”
Melchoir gave a slight and menacing smile that quickly faded. “You can’t go back. You can only go forward, as what you are. Don’t you understand that yet?”
“I understand I’m not like you yet. Before I get there, I’ll—”
“Shoot yourself with one of those bullets?” Melchoir came another two paces nearer. Lawson noted that two vampires—an older, rugged-looking man and a young dark-haired woman—were edging closer on the left, and on the right were two young males, also getting closer. All of them wore filthy clothes stained with the gore of many victims. “Shouldn’t you do that now, then, and save yourself some time?”
“I’ll wait,” said Lawson. Beside him, Ann still held the six-shooter aimed at Melchoir, though she was also aware of the four creatures converging on them.
“My father used to say that to me.” Melchoir’s face had become tight, his cheekbones standing out in relief in the pallid, yellowish flesh. “In that great big white house on the river. He used to say…‘Christian, you should shoot yourself now and save yourself some time’. Wasn’t that so very kind of him? Well…I showed him what I was made of. I stood up to him. Many times I did. And when he said I was a failure and I would always be a failure, I said I would show him I could not only beat him to the ground in the business…but I would do it from a town I had built from impossible earth. Nocturne, my night song. My great creation.” The tight face tried to smile, but it was only a strained half-smile and it was terribly ugly. “You have come home, Lawson. We want to embrace you.”
“I’m sure you do,” said Lawson, who watched the four vampires coming ever nearer. Lawson decided to wait no longer. He shot one of the two young males in the head, and as the music halted again and the throng watched in horrified fascination the creature burned away in his nasty clothes and fell to ashes. On the left, the older male vampire propelled itself forward with incredible speed. Ann fired a shot at the thing but put a hole only in the far wall because the monster had become nearly invisible. As it fell upon Ann and its fangs slid out toward her throat, Lawson shot it just above the left eye and it gave a high-pitched shriek and staggered back, its face already darkening and beginning to ripple and implode.
“Everyone stay calm,” said Christian Melchoir, as ashes flew about the chamber and more dirty and blood-stained clothes littered the floor.
Lawson threw one of his saddlebags at Melchoir’s feet. “Your payment in gold is there. Count it if you please, it’s in a leather pouch. We’re taking Eva Kingsley, and we’re leaving.”
“Are you, now?”
Lawson clenched the cigar between his teeth, the Colt with the bone handle gripped in his right hand. “We are. Move aside.”
Melchoir lifted his hands, and moved aside.
“Walk with me,” Lawson quietly told Ann. “Don’t stumble. Don’t fall.” It was the advice he would have given anyone who found themselves in a snakepit. He moved forward and she went with him as close as a second skin.
“You are wrong to be hunting LaRouge,” Melchoir said as they passed him. “She doesn’t like it. None of us like the fact that you are murdering your own kind. She demands that you cease your pointless wanderings and fully join us, or you will have to be destroyed.”
Lawson said nothing. He and Ann were nearing the circle.
“Let them pass,” said Melchoir, and they opened a place for Lawson and Ann to enter. Once they were within the circle, it closed again. The big vampire with the derringer moved to one side, and Lawson thought he would have to kill this one next.
Ann rushed to her sister. The body in the chair trembled, as if with anticipation.
Lawson said, “Wait.” The sound of his voice stopped Ann from touching the black hood. He came over beside her, and when he was there the figure in the chair began to smoothly stand up and the ropes that had been loosely tied but not knotted fell away and the slim hands rose up to remove the black hood, and there…
…there stood before him the creature with waves of black hair and the beautiful face of a fallen angel. She was still regal in her evil; she still wore it grandly and proudly, though this night she did not wear crimson yet her black eyes held crimson in their depths like pools of flame.
“Hello, Trevor,” LaRouge whispered, smiling faintly as she glided toward him. “I think you’ve been looking for me?”
Ten.
Lawson’s first impulse was to lift his gun to her head…but he did not, for he could not. She was his death-in-life and his life-in-death, and he could not send her whirling away into fire and ash. Not, at least, until he had drained her black ichor…
“My sister!” Ann’s voice was frantic. “Where’s my sister?”
“Turned,” said Christian Melchior, who had come into the circle at their back. “And turned out. Lawson…you had to know we weren’t going to give her over to you. You came here hoping to find LaRouge. Isn’t that true? And why? To destroy her? Or to join with her?”
Lawson stood his ground as LaRouge’s face neared his. Her
hand came out and stroked his cheek. “Beautiful boy,” she whispered. “Never aging. Strong and fierce, forever. Living wild and free. You have been searching for me, not because you desire to kill me, non.” Her fingers moved across his lips. “Because you desire me,” she said. “There is no going back to what you were. That is a foolish dream, and not your destiny.” Her tongue, black as a serpent’s spine, came out and licked along his jawline. “Your destiny is here with us, Trevor. With me. I am fascinated by your fight against what you are, and what you will become. I’ve never known anyone like you. But you have been so…so disobedient. So naughty. Killing your own kind, and why? You are no longer human, Trevor. Accept that. It will be so much better.”
Lawson managed to speak, with an effort. “I am…still human. I am.”
“No, you are not,” she whispered in his ear. “You are much more than human. And in time…when you give yourself fully over…you will learn to be a god.”
A gun was cocked.
The barrel of a Remington pistol was placed against LaRouge’s head.
Slowly, as if enmeshed in the most hideous dream, Lawson reached up and pushed the barrel away.
LaRouge smiled.
“We will turn this one together,” she told him. “Or would you rather kill her now? I’ll let you decide. But please make a quick decision, because I am very hungry.”
Lawson felt the conflicting tides move within him. He smelled the blood of ages on LaRouge’s breath. He smelled the ruination of souls and the dirt of the grave. A god, he thought. Able to live forever, strong and fierce. Forever young, at least in appearance…forever wild and free.
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