Stealing Souls

by Ian Doyle

  Then it hit me what they’d planned to do. I was certain James had already figured it out, probably from the time we started looking for Mr. Chalmers.

  “You are planning to kill your husband,” I said.

  She turned to me and smiled. “Of course I’m planning on killing him.” She touched Mr. Landro. “This is my true husband. I’ve put up with Delhalm’s pathetic attentions far too long. He should have died before I had to spend two years with him.”

  “The longer he lived, the older Simon got,” James said.

  “Yes,” Vivian agreed. “Here in the Empire, everything is governed by the Law of Primogeniture. The eldest male child inherits everything.” She smiled. “As I’m certain you know first-hand, Lord Gallatin. Even though I was a wife to Courtland Delhalm, his wealth was not mine to inherit. Still, if he’d done me the favor of dying early enough, I could have diverted some of those funds before Simon grew old enough to know what I was doing.”

  “But you were running out of time,” James told her. “The boy is eleven, after all.”

  “Yes.” Vivian frowned. “And quite clever. I still don’t know how he managed his escape from the spell.”

  He had Mr. Jinx thank for that, I thought to myself. A child’s love for a toy was a most amazing thing.

  “So you sought to exchange bodies with Simon,” James said. “Keep the boy trapped somewhere until you no longer needed him.”

  “Yes, then you decided to start meddling.” Vivian frowned. “Why did you start meddling?”

  “Your stepson came to me and asked for help.”

  Some of the confusion left her face then. “Ah, Mr. Jinx. I knew there was something going on when that cursed thing suddenly came to life. Where is he now?”

  “Safe,” I replied, taking a step toward my husband. I could not bear her pointing the weapon at him a moment longer.

  “You know,” Vivian said, “you could save Lady Gallatin a lot of torture if you simply told me where I could find that puppet.”

  I smiled at her to show her I had no fear of her.

  “I think not,” James said. “You made a mistake tonight when you sent the Shambler after us. You endangered Mina. That I will not tolerate.”

  “Then you can die,” she said, taking more deliberate aim with the pistol, “and I’ll find the damned puppet on my own.” Her finger was already tightening on the trigger when I stepped into the path of the bullet.

  “No!” James yelled, and I could tell from the sound of his voice that he’d already moved, possibly even gotten out of the way of the bullet. I’d known that he might be able to, but I just couldn’t bring myself to take the chance.

  The pistol shot rang out very loud inside the mausoleum. I felt a sledge slam into my heart. Stumbling, I fell onto my back, one hand clasped over the wound.

  The other three men, Mr. Chalmers, and Mr. Landro drew their weapons.

  Vivian looked at me, a smile spreading across her face as she thought about what she’d done.

  Then I pushed myself back to my feet and saw her smile falter. “Surprise,” I said.

  Didn’t I tell you in the beginning that dark things are drawn to my husband? I know I did. I looked and it’s there. Dark things are drawn to my husband. I happen to be one of them. That was why the cold doesn’t affect me, why I had to have my own invitation at the Delhalm home, why I am stronger than anyone human, why I can’t bear children for my husband.

  And why I can’t be killed by a bullet through the heart.

  James knows what I am, and he loves me for myself anyway. He knew I never set out to become what I am.

  Vivian had to have suspected what I was at that point. So I opened my mouth and revealed my fangs to her.

  “Vampiress!” she shouted. She brought up the pistol and fired again and again, the shots rolling like thunder in the enclosed space.

  Two of the wild shots struck Mr. Chalmers and knocked him to the ground. From the corner of my eyes, I saw that one of the shots went through Mr. Chalmers’ eye. I smelled fresh death in the air.

  Another shot struck me, again in the chest, but I knew from experience the wounds from the pistol would be healed before James and I returned home that night. With no trace of mercy in my heart (I was thinking only of Simon and how this woman had taken his mother and very nearly his own life from him!), I leapt at her and was on her like a striking lioness.

  I grabbed the back of her hair and pulled her head back to bare her throat. James had his pistol in hand and shot with unerring marksmanship. By the time I had ripped Vivian’s throat out and drank her blood (I told you I am not so forgiving as my beloved), James killed two of the men with his pistol and another with a thrown Ikari knife.

  Mr. Martin Landro launched himself at me, pummeling me with his fists as he sought to tear me from his wife’s body. I swept out a hand and knocked him back against the mausoleum wall. By that time, the beast part of me was ready to kill again.

  I leaped at him, letting him think for just a moment that he might escape, then I picked him up by an arm and a leg as if he were a child, and I broke him in half. He died staring up at me, and all the while the beast in me cried out to drink his blood as well.

  When I turned, I saw that James had stayed within the mausoleum. I stepped toward him and he raised his pistol and pointed it at me. I didn’t doubt that he had reloaded, and I knew that his blessed and charmed bullets would probably kill me.

  Still, the beast in me cried out for his blood as well, and it took all my willpower to fight it off. I knew I must look horrible to him. I had seen vampires before that had their feeding faces on.

  “Mina,” he called to me softly. His pistol never wavered. He would die for me if ever there were the need, but he will not die at the hands of the beast inside me. He has told me that upon occasion. I knew that he would tell me again that night or in the morning.

  You see, we each have something to fear in the other. I fear that James will someday turn his attentions to someone new and different who can offer him the child I can never give him, and he fears that one day – or night in our bedchamber – that I will no longer be able to control the hunger that pushes me.

  “Mina,” he called again.

  Slowly, I regained control of myself. When I was certain I had once more locked away that bestial side of myself, I went to him and held him in my arms.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him in a ragged whisper. “I thought she was going to kill you.”

  Handing me a kerchief so that I might clean my face, he held me and told me that everything would be fine, that we would be fine. After all, we had lived through this. For a long time, there was only the sound of his breathing and his heart beating in the crypt, and I listened to them both and made them my own.

  *

  Later, after I had cleaned up and we had once more returned to our normal clothing at the Boar’s Tusk, James and I loaded Simon into the coach and headed home. Despite his anxiety, I knew that Simon was tired beyond measure. He had been through a lot.

  “Are you sure my body is there?” he asked me again as we rode to his father’s house.

  “It is,” I told him. James and I had decided to keep the particulars from him. It was going to be hard enough on him when he discovered that he had lost yet another mother, though this one – he already knew – didn’t love him. But his father would feel the loss, and – in turn – so would Simon.

  Instead, James told Simon a clever tale of how we had tracked down the wizard who had enchanted him, stole the wizard’s cat, and threatened to never return it to him if he didn’t free Simon’s body.

  “But you didn’t hurt the cat, did you?” Simon asked, more concerned about the imaginary feline than he was in why the wizard would do something like that to him.

  “It was a foul and vicious beast,” James insisted. “One eared and mangy. There surely wasn’t one good and decent bone in its entire body.” He paused, grinning. “Unless it had just eaten, of course.”

 
Simon saw the humor in that and laughed. “When I get my body back,” he said a little later, “you should come visit me.”

  I was stricken. I couldn’t find my voice.

  “We will,” James said.

  Turning his little wooden head to me, Simon said, “I think I’m cold now.”

  I held out my arms to him, then lifted him onto my lap. In his puppet body, he was nowhere near as big as an eleven-year old boy. He curled up inside my arm, against my breast, and – after only a few moments – went to sleep.

  Only a short time after that, I was no longer holding an enchanted boy. I held only a child’s toy, a bundle of sticks covered in paint and glue. Regretfully, I picked the puppet up and placed it in the opposite seat.

  Then I cried and James held me, offering what comfort he could, but this was a pain so deep and raw that he could never hope to touch it.

  *

  The next day, James and I went by the Delhalm home. After all, he and Mr. Courtland Delhalm were now business associates so we had a ready excuse.

  The house was in chaos, of course. Vivian Delhalm had been found murdered in Goodhaven Cemetery in the Gutbucket and no answers for who might have done it or what she was doing there appeared to be forthcoming. Mr. Courtland Delhalm hadn’t even known his wife was gone from the house until a Drummond Police inspector told him that morning.

  I saw Simon, but he kept his distance from James and me. His father said that the boy had had a bad dream he couldn’t quite remember, but with everything that had happened to him, Simon was coping.

  The fact that I might never get to talk to him again hurt. But I took as my solace that Simon would never rightly remember everything that had happened to him and it would fade in his memories as all nightmares did.

  Mr. Courtland Delhalm buried the pieces of his second wife in Eternal Hope Cemetery the day after she was found. The newspapers and public scrying bowls stayed full of the news.

  The night after that, I waited till sunset and went out to Eternal Hope Cemetery with a wooden stake, found Vivian’s grave in the darkness, and sat down to wait. I’d known when I bit her that I’d turned her and she would rise again.

  I’ve only turned two others in my long life, one by accident and the other because I thought he’d loved me and I hadn’t wanted to lose him. He’d discovered I was a vampiress and promised to love me forever. He hadn’t, and I soon found out he’d only lied to me to get me to turn him. I gave the first a final death, and looked forward to doing the same for the other should the chance ever present itself.

  As I sat there at the foot of Vivian Delhalm’s fresh grave, running the two-foot long stake through my hands, I thought about my relationship with my husband. Sometimes, like tonight, I wondered if he would love me were I not a vampire.

  I didn’t know.

  I thought that he would, and I chose to believe that. But I know that dark things are drawn to my husband, and he is drawn to them in return. It might be that he wouldn’t.

  Then the ground trembled in front of me and I saw Vivian thrust her hand through the fresh-turned soil. I smiled in anticipation and took a new hold on the stake.

  When she sat up from her grave, doubtless aware of what had happened to her and of the relentless hunger that now filled her, she found me waiting.

  “Hello, Vivian,” I said. Then I shoved the stake through her dead heart and watched her turn to ash. I rather enjoyed the surprised look of anguish on her dirt-smeared features. Killing her the second time was as equally gratifying as killing her the first time.

  I rose and dusted myself off. On the way back, I had Edmond stop for a fresh bottle of fruit wine, which was not meant to age, but to be drunk while it was new. I felt like celebrating finally for the first time in days. The darkness that was in my life and my husband’s would draw us back in soon, I had no doubts about that, but I knew we could take a moment just to be ourselves, just to be in love.

  If you enjoyed this book, you might also enjoy R. J. Salter’s new series, Jaelik Tarlsson Voyages.

  In the first book, The Colossus of Mahrass, professional freebooter Jaelik Tarlsson follows the directions of a beautiful ghost with an agenda of her own – and plenty of surprises.

  Deep in enemy territory, Jaelik has to find a forgotten weapon to destroy a warlord bent on carving himself an empire in blood.

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