She was right there, in front of him, and she was offering him eternity as she knew it to be.
With a slow hand he unbuttoned his black coat.
Then he unbuttoned his crimson waistcoat.
With the burning end of his Marsh-Wheeling he lit the end of the fuse that was revealed. The fuse was connected to eight sticks of dynamite, four on each side, in a small leather harness that hung around his neck and against his shirt. It was what he’d asked Father Deale to procure for him, before he left New Orleans. He could image the priest asking to buy eight sticks of dynamite from a supplier. But Father Deale was nothing if not persuasive, and the items had been waiting for him in a box at the front desk.
The fuse sparked and sizzled.
LaRouge looked at it, her eyes widening. There was enough explosive to blow her and every creature in this chamber to pieces that could never, ever find their way back together again.
Lawson said, “I came here plenty oiled up.”
“What?” LaRouge whispered, rage beginning to surface in her voice.
He looked at Ann.
“Get out,” he said, and handed her the second Colt. “However you can.”
Then Lawson grabbed hold of LaRouge, pinning her arms at her sides, and in that instant when all the vampires of the Dark Society were stunned by a man who had chosen death over undeath, he let his own rage rise up from the depths. His mouth opened, the lower jaw unhinged and the fangs slid out, and he bit into LaRouge’s throat where the ichor ran black and thick. He tasted her, the most bitter wine he had ever sipped, and then he drank her in great swallows. By his estimation he had less than a minute before the fuse burned to the first stick.
Many things happened at once, in the wake of this shock. LaRouge fought wildly. She was strong, and as she hissed and struggled she and Lawson staggered left and right as if locked in their own dance. Some of the vampires drew back and others rushed forward. Ann shot the burly bald vampire in the head, aimed a shot at Melchoir and missed because he was already a moving blur advancing on her. Another shot missed again, even at a range of only a few feet, and then Ann was running for the nearest window. An arm caught her around the neck and pulled her back, and as she twisted to face her attacker she saw it was not Melchoir but a young boy who might have been sixteen years old, his tangled hair the color of sawdust, his face bony and his eyes aflame. Dried blood caked the front of his blue-checked shirt. His fangs strained for her throat, and she put the Remington up under his chin and fired into his head the fifth of her six silver angels in that cylinder.
Melchoir had abandoned his attack on Ann Kingsley for bigger game.
He hit Lawson like a steam engine. In spite of that, Lawson held onto LaRouge and his gun and continued to drink, as the fuse burned down and the seconds ticked past and LaRouge tried to get her arms up to throw him aside or plunge her claws into his eyes but she could not.
As the vampires came at Ann with tremendous speed, she fired the last of her Remington’s ammunition into their midst and then opened up with the Colt. Two of them were hit and began to sizzle and break apart, which made the others draw back. Ashes flew in the flickering yellow light, but there were too many. The window was at Ann’s back; she was about to jump, and then she froze as she witnessed a transformation from a nightmare world.
Christian Melchoir was changing. His body color darkened, like that of a chameleon on a gray rock. His skin rippled into scales. His forehead thickened, his jaw lengthened, his hands became knotty claws. Something twitched and moved at his back, under his gray suit coat. His body became thickly muscular in a span of seconds. With the ripping of cloth two ebony wings burst from beneath his shirt and waistcoat and suit coat, and unfolding they made him appear to be a huge gnarled and muscular bat, even as his head seemed to sink into his shoulders and his face became animalish, his mouth opening and the fangs tearing at the air.
She fired a silver angel at him, but he was already gone.
Melchoir hit Lawson with a force that lifted the vampire gunslinger off his feet and tore him away from LaRouge, leaving grooves in her flesh that leaked the ink-black ichor. He lost his hold on his pistol and it skidded away across the planks. LaRouge staggered back as Melchoir’s claws closed around Lawson’s shoulders and bit into the flesh, and just that quickly the bat-creature’s wings beat the air and thrust both of them through a window on the other side of the room, out of the ruined mansion and into the night before Ann could take aim again.
LaRouge’s burning gaze fell upon Ann Kingsley.
Ann lifted the Colt to fire. She was aware of blurred shapes coming at her from all sides, aware that she could get off one shot before the others took her.
She remembered Lawson saying, as if pleading it to himself, I am still human. I am.
Ann turned to the left and shot a thin, ragged and gray-haired female vampire who’d been just about to reach her. The woman gave a shrill cry of what might have been terror as she blackened and broke apart, her eyes bursting like blisters and a gout of blue fire coming from her mouth.
Ann had an instant to see LaRouge advancing on her, grinning like a death’s-head, and then Ann turned and jumped through the window into the swamp below.
In the air over Nocturne, Lawson twisted his body around to grab hold of the shape that Christian Melchoir had shifted himself into. The fuse was still sizzling; maybe he had twenty seconds. Melchoir tried to sling Lawson downward, the ebony wings beating furiously, but Lawson hung on. They spun in a mad circle, another crazed dance in midair. Lawson made an attempt to get his body up onto Melchoir’s shoulders, but the wings beat at him and the creature was too strong.
Lawson’s back slammed into something that nearly broke his spine. Melchoir had crashed him into the church’s steeple. The impact made the crooked Cross topple from its mount into the water thirty feet below. Melchoir pulled him back again, and once more rammed Lawson into the steeple with a force that cracked ribs and made the gunslinger cry out with pain. The third time Lawson was crashed against the steeple, a clawed hand reached down and crushed out the burning fuse. Lawson grasped hold of the steeple’s roof tiles and strained for breath as the bat-creature in Melchoir’s clothes hovered before him in triumph, its wings thrashing the air.
“My town,” came the ragged, otherworldly voice from the distorted vocal cords. “Our world.”
“Wrong,” Lawson rasped, his back and ribs pulsing with pain. “You’re about to leave…both of them.” As he hung onto the steeple with one arm, he lifted the pearl-handled derringer he’d taken from its pocket inside his coat.
Lawson fired a silver bullet into the creature’s head just below the right eye. The shot echoed out into the night.
Melchoir’s wings drew him backward. As the body convulsed and the red fissures broke open and the vampire’s life essence was destroyed by the silver and the holy water, one wing collapsed while the other continued to beat, which put Melchoir in a circle going around and around the steeple. Lawson lay back, nearly exhausted, the bitter taste of LaRouge’s ichor in his mouth and the veins of his body itching as if coming back to life, his face feverish, his nerves on fire.
He watched Christian Melchoir burn. Watched the face collapse inward. The eyes remained fixed upon him, it seemed, until they burst and ran in rivulets down the cheeks. The mouth was open in a soundless oath of surprise. Lawson watched the chest and arms and back shrivel, watched the wings crumble to ash and fall away, and then the smoking torso and the misshapen head still with a mat of crisped hair turned to ashes, and all that was left of the creator of Nocturne and the savior of the creature called LaRouge fell into the swamp along with his clothing.
Lawson listened.
There was no more music here.
He could still see candlelight in the mansion beyond. If Ann had been taken…
He didn’t wish to think about that. He didn’t wish to think. He had lost his prized Stetson, which made him a little angry. He had one more cigar, and luckily this
had survived being fully crushed. He had several more friction matches. He decided he would have a smoke, if he could risk blowing up his dynamite waistcoat. It was a risk worth taking. He was still alive; he meant to stay that way, as long as he could, but he did enjoy a good cigar. His movements were slow and labored, but at least he could move.
Yes, there was music, after all.
The sound of the swamp rose up to him. The sound of frogs and crickets, of birds and ’gators, of life in every puddle and pond and knothole and leaf.
Nothing came after him. He lay against the crooked dunce-cap steeple and smoked his cigar and relished for a moment his safety. He could see the blue shimmer of the stars. He could also see, to the east, the faint glow of the sunrise.
Lawson smiled grimly. Caught on a church steeple, with maybe three or four broken ribs and a spine that had nearly been snapped. Caught here with the sun coming up and eight sticks of dynamite on his chest. Father Deale would get a good laugh out of this one.
There was still enough fuse left to blow himself up, if he pleased. There was one more silver bullet in the derringer. He could go that way too, if he wished.
He would think about that, he decided, when he finished his cigar. And maybe he would watch the sun rise, as well. Burn his eyes out with its beauty, this last time.
He heard a distant voice, calling “Christian? Christian?”
It was a woman’s voice, accented with French. Her voice. “Christian?” she called, a third time. But no one answered, and LaRouge ceased calling because she had heard the shot and must’ve known he was dead.
Would they leave the party now? Lawson wondered. Get in their boats and go away? And go where? Or would they hide here in the daylight and leave when the sun sank again? He could imagine them going back in a little armada to whatever swamp town they’d conquered and consumed, and from there out into all points of the compass, out into the Big Country with all it promised for the vampire, out into the world of ordinary mortals and unsuspecting humans who knew nothing of the Dark Society and so were unprepared when they came in the night.
After awhile a man called for Christian, again from the distance. And once more, with a little chill of fear in the voice: “Christian?”
He is not here, Lawson thought. He is no longer among you. But I am still here, and I am not leaving yet.
Lawson watched the stars fade and the night turn ruddy to the east. He explored his sensations of broken ribs and bruised spine. There was a great deal of pain. It would fade in time—three or four days, maybe—as everything healed, but right now the pain was fierce. He chewed on the end of his cold stogie and considered that pain was the human’s friend; it taught lessons, if one embraced it as a hard taskmaster. But one could learn from such lessons, and Lawson intended not to let them go unheeded.
He did not wish to die in this half-life, in this half-world between vampires and humanity. The sunlight was harsher to them than to he, so…yes…they would be hiding somewhere near, and likely had already begun preparations for their daytime sleep.
Soon he was going to have to decide what to do. Time advanced; the sun was coming up as a scarlet fireball through the cypress trees and weeping willows. He felt its early heat in the still and steamy air. He felt its power prickling his skin. In another hour or so it would be as if the fiery hand of God was pressed against him. He was going to have to find some shelter, if he had to crawl into the church’s belltower and curl up there around his broken ribs.
The night fled, and the sun strengthened.
The noise of the swamp became a harsher buzzing, as armies of insects reacted to the growing light and heat. Lawson crawled to the edge of the roof, moving painfully and slowly, and leaned over. There was a glassless window a few feet down. The sunlight was getting yellow now, the glare off the green water burning his eyes. He was going to have to turn himself into the correct position and get his boots on that window ledge, then lower his body through. The pain in his back and ribs were robbing both his strength and his power of will. The sun was hot, adding to his pain. His eyes were nearly blinded. It was going to be a hard descent, though only a matter of maybe four or five feet.
He was ready. He had to go now, before this pain worsened.
“Lawson! Lawson!”
He heard her voice, off somewhere to his left, and what remained of his heart leapt. Wherever she’d been hiding, she had heard the derringer shot too. He could barely see without the dark-tinted goggles. He shouted, “I’m here! Up on the steeple!”
There was a moment’s pause. Then: “I see you!” He squinted against the glare and could make her out also. Ann was rowing a skiff up underneath him, and she looked to be covered with gray mud.
“Can you get down from there?” she called. “Can you jump?”
“Maybe,” he said. It was thirty feet and would be a painful landing for him, even in the water. “Here! I’m going to drop this!” With an effort he removed his coat and waistcoat and got the leather harness and the sticks of dynamite off, lifting it over his head. “Get underneath it so it doesn’t get wet. You ready?”
“I am.”
Lawson dropped the harness over and it landed in the boat. “Matches, too. In the waistcoat pocket on the right. Have to keep those dry.” He folded the waistcoat up and dropped it into the boat. He wished he had a rope to lower himself. Maybe there was one in the belltower, but the sun was burning him and his senses were going and he felt panic start to gnaw at him. He was going to have to jump, take the pain and get into that boat. Then find some shelter. He thought sure Ann would be dead by now. There was no time for further deliberation, he had to go.
Lawson gritted his teeth, got his body turned boots first and pushed himself off the roof.
It was bad, but the sunlight promised worse. He came up from the water and with Ann’s help pulled himself over. He huddled in the boat, careful not to wet either the dynamite nor the waistcoat. “Shelter,” he said hoarsely. “I’m burning.”
Ann nodded and began to row toward the nearest half-submerged mansion, a structure with a partly-collapsed roof and green vines and moss covering its facade. “They came after me,” she said, her face and hair coated with dried mud and mud freighting her clothes. Her voice was quiet and measured; it was the voice of a woman fighting shock. “Three of them. I swam. Got down in the mud. I stayed there as long as I could. Then I moved to another place. Down in the mud. I found a place I could hide. Lifted my face just a little above the water. Just a little. So I could breathe. They came after me, but I didn’t move. For a long time. Then they went away. I saw them in their boats. Some left, but some stayed. They’re hiding in these houses. My sister…they turned Eva into one of them, didn’t they?”
“They did,” said the vampire, who shivered as he burned.
“They’re in these houses. All around us. Are they sleeping?”
“They are,” said Lawson.
“Will they wake up in the daylight?”
“No. They’re not like me. I can stand it…a little bit. Will you please hurry?”
“I will,” she promised.
They glided into the cool shadows of the ruined mansion. Sunlight did stream through the windows, but there were trapped corners of velvet darkness. And in those corners were boats with bodies lying in them, wrapped up in protective material such as sailcloth, blankets and—as Lawson had used—window or bed curtains. In this one room alone there were four bodies lying in three boats, their skiffs tied one to another and anchored in place.
Lawson and Ann sat in their skiff in the green gloom, one battling his pain and the other fighting both her shock and grief.
The young woman’s gloved fingers drew her pistol from her holster and began to load it with silver bullets from the ammo loops. Lawson’s Colt with the rosewood grip, grimy with mud, was stuck down in her waistband. Her hands shook a little. “My gun’s dried out,” she said. “I cleaned it as best I could. Do you want me to kill them?”
“Yes,” he an
swered.
“Do you want to see their faces before I do it? The woman…LaRouge. You don’t want me to kill her, do you?”
“She won’t be here,” he said, relieved by the coolness and the shadows. “She knows Christian Melchoir is dead. She suspects I’m still alive. So wherever she is…she’s somewhere else by now.”
“You’re not going to give up looking for her, are you?”
“Give up?” Lawson asked. He stared at the other boats, and the sleepers. “No. I’m not ever giving up.” He saw one of the bodies twitch, as if enduring a bad dream. Maybe they knew they were in danger; maybe they would make an effort to rise from their sleep, even as the bullets were delivered. But today belonged to the angels.
“I’m sorry about your sister,” he said. “I’m sorry she was caught up in this. I’m sorry…for everything.” Even as he spoke, he smelled the fragrance of Ann’s warm blood. He figured the sleepers did too, and they dreamed of sinking their fangs deep and drinking their fill. Maybe he might dream that of Ann, too. Maybe he was more vampire than he wished. Maybe.
Maybe.
“After you finish with the bullets,” Lawson said, “there’s the dynamite. I think Nocturne should be returned to the swamp. What do you say?”
“I say…” Her fierce black eyes in the mud-covered face peered at him. “I want to find my sister, and if she’s anything like them…I want to set her free. I can’t bear the thought of my Eva…like that. But no one will believe us, will they?”
“Not many, but a few will.”
“Where will you start looking for LaRouge?”
“I think they’ve overtaken another town at the edge of the swamp. I’ll find it. That’s where I’ll start.”
Ann set the six-shooter in her lap. She chewed on her bottom lip, as some of the bodies writhed in their shrouds.
“It seems to me,” she said quietly, “that you need somebody to help you.”
“I wouldn’t ask anyone on this earth to do that. Not knowing what’s out there waiting.”
“It seems to me,” Ann went on, “that you need somebody who can travel by day.” Lawson was silent.
I Travel by Night Page 9