Price glanced back at Bittner, who had appeared at the door and was watching the confrontation with what looked like a mixture of awe and elation, and said, “Sheriff?”
Bittner blinked at Price. His mouth worked a moment before he said, “You want me to leave again?”
“I do.”
Bittner nodded, backing through the door slowly.
“And Sheriff?” Price said. “If you open that door again, I’ll gut you and roast your liver for supper.”
With more agility than Cody would’ve believed the man was capable of mustering, Bittner hopped back and slammed home the door.
Price stepped toward the cell. “Penders, Horton. Would you please join Dragomir back at the inn?”
A braying terror exploded in Cody’s mind. “What inn?”
Price’s smile widened. “You know which one, Mr. Wilson.”
Chapter Fourteen
Cody clutched the cold iron bars. “What’d you do with her?”
Penders had been moving toward the door, but now he stopped, shot a fierce look at Cody. “Don’t tell him, Mr. Price. He don’t need to know.”
Cody noticed a dark smear of crimson on the forearm of Penders’s gray shirt. “What did you guys do to my horse?” Cody said in a tight voice.
Penders winked. “The old girl was tasty.”
Cody’s stomach roiled. Oh, holy hell, he thought. Poor Sally.
“I’ll join you in a moment, Penders. You and Horton need to prepare for our performance.”
As the door closed and Cody was left alone with Adam Price, a horrible certainty descended on him. Cody paled. “You aim to put Marguerite in your show, don’t you? You aim to bewitch her the same way you bewitched Angela?”
“Mr. Wilson, I assure you we never bewitched anyone.”
“Angela wouldn’t have done that on her own.”
Price gave him a penetrating look that Cody found unbearable. “We both know better than that, Mr. Wilson. Your wife was practically aching for an excuse to transgress. We merely provided her the opportunity she was seeking.”
Cody lunged at the bars. “Fuck you.”
Price loomed closer. “Would you like to hurt me, Mr. Wilson?”
Cody licked his cracked lips. The man
(he’s not a man)
was within grabbing distance now. If Cody wanted, he could seize a handful of those glossy brown locks and rip them out at the roots. If he wanted
(you’d be dead within seconds and you know it)
he could wipe that shit-eating grin off the bastard’s face…
Price’s face began to change.
Oh, holy God, Cody thought. I’m not seeing this.
But he was. Price’s chiseled, too-pretty face was now stretching, thinning, the jaw and the teeth elongating, the skin at the man’s temples pulsing with unnatural rapidity. Cody thought of his stepmother making bread, the way the dough would attenuate; the bread had the same pasty color that was overtaking Price’s face now, the skin growing bloodless. But the eyes…Jesus Christ, the eyes were glowing in their enlarged sockets now, an unnatural, iridescent orange that reminded Cody of the gaslights he’d once seen as a very young child in an Albuquerque hotel, a phantasmal orange hue that made him think of ghosts, that had kept him up the night he and his father stayed there despite the fact that the bed was the most comfortable one he’d ever lain in.
Cody drifted backward and averted his eyes.
“Few get to see me this way,” Price said, only it wasn’t Price’s voice anymore. “The ones who do are the ones who suffer most.”
“You…you’ve got an accent,” Cody said breathlessly. He stared down at his shoes, telling himself that no matter what that thing said, he wouldn’t peer into those glowing orange eyes again.
“Yes,” the Price-thing said. The voice was guttural, like steel scraping stone. “Now you have to believe it. It’s good for you to learn the truth now. While there’s still time.”
Cody’s voice was scarcely a whisper. “Time for what?”
“Time for you to fear the night.”
Cody’s whole body began to shudder. He couldn’t help it. He realized he was going to wet himself soon.
“Look at me.”
Cody shook his head, felt the room begin to tilt.
“LOOK AT ME, CODY WILSON!” the voice thundered.
Though the last thing in the world Cody wanted to do was to peer into the monstrous white face again, his head rose up and he did it anyway.
The creature held Cody for an endless moment with its glowing orange eyes.
Then, miraculously, Cody found his voice. “Where the hell do you…what are you?”
“You know what I am,” the creature growled.
Where Adam Price had been now stood a creature at least a head taller. The face had elongated even more, but it was only in proportion to the rest of the ghostly white frame. Arms as long as broomsticks, a neck that was longer but that also pulsated with tendons and a hundred tiny muscles that twitched and jumped. Cody shuddered at the sight of Price’s tongue—long, black and cloven like a serpent’s—as it slid out slowly between the chalky lips.
Cody had crowded against the stone wall at the rear of his cell. The creature merely held him with its incandescent eyes, and Cody found he was unable to look away.
“You have killed one of mine,” the creature said.
Cody sought for his nerve, but found he had none. Those unblinking eyes penetrated into his cowering, quivering heart and rendered speech impossible.
The creature that no longer looked much like Adam Price continued. “The twins have been with me since the 1600s. They were with me in the motherland. In Hungary. In Austria, Switzerland and France. They refused to abandon me when things once looked very bad in northern Germany. And now Dmitri is dead.”
Cody’s head spun. He struggled to make sense of Price’s words, but the infernal eyes effaced all thought. He could scarcely breathe.
“I have never lost a servant until I was ready to let him go,” Price said, his low voice a throaty roar. “I will punish you, Cody Wilson. You will weep blood.”
Through the churning terror that entombed him, Cody had a quick recollection of the play, The Return of the Maiden Carmilla. Though Price never looked like he did now during the play, there had been a similar aura of malice oozing out of him, first as he pursued Angela and then at the end when he and the Seneslavs acted out the fight against Penders and Horton.
“You lost,” Cody whispered under his breath.
Price’s slow grin was an obscene, grisly rictus. “That was a play.”
“But you still lost in the end. Men like you always do.”
“Perhaps you’d like to face me now, Mr. Wilson. While the others are out of the room.”
Cody tried to conceal the leap of terror Price’s words had wrought within him. “How am I supposed to fight you when I’m in this cell?”
Wordlessly, the vampire stepped over to the barred door. Price extended a cadaverous index finger, out of which sprouted a black fingernail as long and sharp as a pocketknife. The tip of the nail twitched toward the keyhole. Cody watched in astonishment as the cell door swung open.
“Come forth,” the vampire rasped.
Cody did as he was bidden despite the way his heart galloped in his chest. He passed through the cell doorway, then angled to the right, as far away from Price as he could get.
Cody turned and regarded the vampire, who eyed him with sardonic contempt.
“You have me all alone,” Price rumbled. “Now best me.”
Cody looked around. “I don’t have a weapon.”
Price opened first one side of his sleek black frock, then the other. His serrated, icepick teeth garbling his speech, Price said, “Nor do I.”
When Cody made no move to attack, Price gestured toward the cell. “Would you like to take refuge in your sanctuary?”
Cody’s breath came in insufficient heaves. He clenched his fists, waited for inspirat
ion to strike, but the only thing that struck him was an insane urge to run. If only there were some place to run to…
Price’s orange eyes glowed, the vampire suddenly enraged. “Are you not a man? Have you no dignity at all?”
Cody felt a dull heat kindle at the nape of his neck.
“We take your wife from you,” Price said, his orange eyes blazing. “We humiliate you before an entire town. You follow us like some obsequious cur who follows its master even after it has been turned out of its home. You witness the murder and the butchery of untold victims.” Price stepped toward him, the tendons of his neck thick and corded. “Yet you still cannot muster enough mettle to strike me?”
Cody strode at Price, cocked a fist, swung. But the moment before Cody’s fist slammed into Price’s face, Price whipped his head aside, seized Cody two-handed by the shirtfront, pivoted and hurled him toward the wall. Cody collided with the stone wall and landed on the desk. The impact snapped the spindly desk legs like brittle twigs, and Cody, riding the desktop like a child’s sled, came crashing down on the unforgiving floor.
Price chortled, but Cody scarcely noticed it. His hand, as if directed by some primitive survival instinct, had closed on one of the slender desk legs. Cody regarded it in mute desperation. The bottom of the desk leg was circular, but the broken end had been splintered halfway down its length, leaving the upper tip as sharp as an arrowhead.
Or a stake.
Cody began to rise.
“Resourceful,” Price remarked. “No wonder you were able to best Dmitri.”
Cody said nothing, only clenched the short spear as tightly as he could, his eyes flicking repeatedly to Price’s chest.
“Perhaps you’d like some help,” Price rasped. And Cody watched with a mixture of suspicion and bemusement as Price opened his frock coat and unbuttoned his white shirt. When it was open all the way to Price’s waist, the vampire tapped his bare chest with an index finger. “Here. I will give you one opportunity.”
Cody’s eyes narrowed. “You’re bluffing.”
“Do it now!” Price roared.
With a savage grunt, Cody slammed the makeshift spear into Price’s chest, the shard of wood sinking easily into Price’s flesh. The splintered desk leg was over three feet long, and at least a third of that slid into the center of Price’s chest before the friction of the vampire’s ribs, lungs and tissue brought it to a halt. His clawed hands clamped over the part of the table leg not buried in his chest, Price staggered backward into the door, beyond which Sheriff Bittner was hollering to see if everything was all right. Cody was about to scour the jail for some previously undetected escape route when the sight of Price sliding the spear out of his chest made Cody’s hope congeal.
Cody stared in mute dismay as the desk leg was drawn slowly out of the vampire’s chest. Cody gaped at the smear of crimson on the wood. “How the hell can you—”
“It’s only a play,” Price said. “Do you really believe we would divulge a means of destroying us? After all you’ve seen these past several days, I can’t believe you’d be so naïve.”
With an effortless tug, Price extracted the stake from his chest. A steady trickle of blood issued from the hole, but the vampire behaved as if he were in no pain at all. Price chucked the bloody table leg aside.
And then Cody was flung through the cell doorway and landing on the urine-stained floor. The cell door snicked shut behind him. Cody turned in time to see Price moving toward the door. The vampiric features were metamorphosing into human ones again. Despite the gaping wound in his chest, Price behaved as though nothing extraordinary had just occurred. The vampire buttoned up his frock coat, brushed his long brown curls out of his eyes and grasped the doorknob, which quivered in his grip. Bittner was rattling it from the other side and shouting angry curses through the door.
Price glanced down, taking stock of himself. Unhurriedly, the vampire straightened his coat, palmed sweat from his forehead and undid the door bolt.
On the instant Bittner came blundering in, the overweight man moving with the graceless energy of a frightened heifer. “What the hell’s happening in here, Price? I thought I heard—” Bittner broke off, noticing the vermilion trail Price had left. “Say, you’re bleeding.”
“It’s nothing,” Price said.
“The hell it is,” Bittner said. “You’re bleedin’ like—”
“Sheriff.”
Bittner shut up fast. He regarded Price with immediate trepidation.
Price went on in a calmer tone. “You will guard Mr. Wilson until the show tonight. At that time, you and your men will escort him to the saloon for our show.”
A stupid, childlike grin spread on Bittner’s face. “I can’t wait to see it, Mr. Price. I bet it’s grand.”
Price’s eyes locked on Cody’s. “‘Grand’ doesn’t begin to capture its glory, Sheriff Bittner. This will be our greatest performance ever.”
And with that, Price went out.
Chapter Fifteen
According to the clock hung above the finely crafted mahogany bar at Marguerite’s, it was nearing ten o’clock. A gaunt old pianist plinked out some maudlin song with inexpert enthusiasm, yet you could scarcely hear the out-of-tune upright piano over the noise generated by the drunken patrons. A barber’s chair sat untenanted beside the piano, despite the fact that damn near every man present tonight was in dire need of a shearing. In the main gathering room, there were nearly sixty men drinking whiskey—the kind Cody’s dad referred to as tarantula juice—swapping jokes and trying to one-up one another. Most of the patrons, Cody noticed without surprise, were armed. Despite the fact that the shoes on many of them were little more than tired scraps of leather held together by fraying thread and blind faith, these men still had ample funds to keep themselves in whiskey and firearms. Cody wondered how many of them had children and how well those children ate.
There was only one waitress present, a harried girl with lank black hair and a permanent expression of nervous tension carved into her face. Cody couldn’t blame her for being nervous. Marguerite and Eliza were nowhere to be seen, so not only did the girl have to serve drinks to the entire assembly of ruffians, she had to pour them as well. Several men shouted complaints about her tardiness every time she passed. Cody thought it just as well that the drink service was delayed tonight. It wouldn’t hurt the patrons of Marguerite’s to slow down their alcohol consumption, and a bit more sobriety could only enhance the overall mood in here.
Thinking of Marguerite, Cody’s eyes happened on the doorway beyond the bar that led to the kitchen. It was closed. Frowning, Cody glanced over at the stairway leading to the second story and saw with surprise that a steel accordion gate had been extended there, effectively closing off the upper floor. His frown deepened. Was it common practice for Marguerite to block that passageway, or did it have something to do with the devils and their show?
The men ceased playing cards and billiards when Horton peeked around the curtain’s edge and announced the play would begin shortly. If Horton spotted Cody in the audience, he didn’t let on.
Cody sat in the third row—there were six rows total—between Sheriff Bittner and the deputy named Boom Catterson. This man was even fatter than the sheriff, though not nearly so tall. Like Sheriff Bittner’s, Boom’s hat was ill-fitting, but unlike the sheriff, Boom did not sport a brown Stetson. Instead, the sweating, pink, clean-shaven man favored a prim gray bowler hat with a green feather tucked into its band. As if this wasn’t ridiculous enough, Boom Catterson’s clothes were as badly tailored as the hat was ill-chosen. When the stumpy deputy took his seat next to Cody, his white shirt stretched severely, revealing fish-white diamonds of wattled flesh between each set of buttons. Unless the fabric of Boom’s shirt was extraordinarily durable, Cody mused, the little white buttons would go pinging toward the stage in short order.
If it were only these two men, Bittner and Boom Catterson, guarding him, Cody would feel confident in surprising them and either escaping through th
e doors or disarming one of them to make it a fair fight.
But Slim Keeley was another matter.
Marguerite’s ex-husband stood a short way off, leaning against a wooden post. There were complex spirals and curlicues inlaid in the post, no doubt the work of Marguerite’s father. Yes, Cody thought, he could picture the man sweating over the woodworking, the carpenter putting in long hours to create a design that few would ever appreciate.
Least of all a man like Slim Keeley.
Keeley’s horsey face was pinched in a perpetual squint, one Cody figured the guy had spent long hours practicing in the mirror. Slim smoked one cigarette after another, rolling the next one before the first was finished. Slim would lean like that, his tall frame performing each duty with studied casualness, his hands in languorous but constant motion. The rolling of a cigarette. The tossing aside and the grinding of the butts with a bootheel. The lighting of the next one. An occasional sip from a silver hip flask.
Gradually, as though he’d been aware of Cody’s scrutiny the entire time, Slim Keeley swiveled his head and squinted at him. The man’s black Stetson shadowed his eyes, but beneath that Cody thought he discerned the ghost of a smile.
Cody turned back to the stage, unaccountably and totally enraged.
“Slim don’t like you much, does he?” a man in front of Cody said. The man was swarthy and sloppy, the black beard surrounding his wet russet lips reminding Cody unpleasantly of a wild tangle of pubic hair wreathing some unvirtuous woman’s worn-out labia.
Cody met the man’s mordant stare and considered telling him to go hump a goat.
But Sheriff Bittner reached forward and clapped the man on the shoulder. “This here’s Deputy John Ebright. Unless you want him to whup your ass the way Slim did earlier, I recommend you show him the respect a man in his position’s owed.”
Cody gave a faint shake of the head. “His position? Sheriff Bittner, I don’t call being your lackey a position of much prestige.”
“Careful, Wilson,” Bittner said. “John’s a hell of a shot with them Schofields.”
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