“Listen,” his dad said, a strong hand clutching Cody’s shoulder. “It might seem like that, but we don’t. Marguerite said they move in daylight. They don’t like the sun, but it doesn’t hurt them. Remember how early they got to Mesquite?”
Cody tensed, recalling the massacre at the bar. “You have any blue flowers nearby?”
But his dad was already shaking his head. “It’s called wolfsbane, son. Up until tonight I figured it was just another superstition.”
“It’s true, Dad. When they get near it—”
His father waved him off. “We went through all that. Marguerite told us how the big vampire reacted in the cellar when he looked at the flowers in her hair. She wasn’t certain, but she thought they might be allergic to them. So Gladys and I talked it over, and we both agreed the nearest wolfsbane we know of is up in the mountains.”
Cody said wonderingly, “Marguerite told you everything, didn’t she?”
“She had to,” his dad agreed. “You think I would’ve believed a crazy story like that otherwise?”
Cody frowned. “I still don’t—”
“They like to feed, but they don’t have to drink from people,” his dad went on. “You saw that big one bleeding those horses, didn’t you?”
Cody nodded.
“Well this is a ranch, son. There’re cattle, horses…hell, Gladys even keeps…” His voice cut off a moment. He cleared his throat. “Gladys even kept a few chickens in a coop just off the tack room. You think they’ll have any trouble finding food if we stay in here like a couple of cornered rats?”
“So we try to draw them out? We make ourselves the bait?”
Jack Wilson sighed. “Cody, I don’t like to say this, but I might not have much time.” He gritted his teeth, his nostrils flaring. “Every time I look at the girl now…even at you…I have this burning in my mind.”
“You’d never hurt us.”
“I’d never hurt you,” he said fiercely. “But the thing crawling around in my head isn’t me. Don’t you get that? I believe that monster out there was a sweet little boy before they got hold of him, but now look at him. You saw the way he guzzled at Gladys’s wrists. That’s gonna be me in a few hours.”
Cody blew out weary breath. “Okay, we split up for now. But if you hear anything, you holler. We get them inside the house, there’ll be nowhere for them to go.”
Jack Wilson nodded, following Cody into the hallway. “I’ve got enough rounds for the Schofield to hold off a whole cavalry, and I’ve seen you reload that Colt. There’s no way two of them will be able to beat the two of us as long as we’re ready.” His dad reached out, grabbed the scythe, which they’d propped against the wall. “You take this. I’ve got enough to think about without running around like the Grim Reaper.”
Cody took the scythe, eyed the congealed blood on the blade.
His dad hopped into the kitchen. Cody called after him, “You sure all the windows in there are locked?”
“Windows, doors, every way in or out. There’s nothing they can do I won’t know about.”
Cody headed for the spare bedroom, the one in which he’d slept before he moved away. He turned in the doorway, regarded his dad, who sat at the kitchen table, laying out rounds for the Schofield.
Cody said, “Why can’t I shake the feeling you’re still trying to protect me?”
Jack Wilson looked up at him with a wry smile. “Of course I’m trying to protect you. You’re my son.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
With an overpowering sense of misgiving, Cody closed the door and faced the room in which he’d spent four tempestuous years. It looked much as he remembered, though perhaps a bit smaller and not nearly so depressing. By the window there was a plain table with a leather-bound Bible on it. The window faced south, where his father’s land stretched for only a mile or so. Beyond that, another rancher’s spread began, though a barbed wire fence marked the boundary. Cody leaned the scythe against the wall to the right of the window and peered out.
The morning light had grown brighter but was suffused with a peculiar bluish cast. It reminded Cody of the time, just after his father had married Gladys, that the three of them had journeyed all the way through southern Texas, spending a couple days in San Antonio, before ultimately reaching Corpus Christi and the Gulf of Mexico. The sky outside now was much the same pale blue as it had been over the ocean. Cody had been short with Gladys most of the trip, but whenever they’d ventured down to the Gulf, which was every day for the better part of a week, a deep calm had breathed over him, and their little family had been uncharacteristically happy.
Thinking of Gladys, the woman whom he’d never really given a chance and who now was dead—or, God help them all, worse—Cody walked over to his old bed and inspected the fluted bedposts. When Jack Wilson remarried, he’d refused to use the same bed in which he and Cody’s mother had slept. But the ornately carved mahogany frame had been a gift from Cody’s maternal grandparents, so instead of getting rid of it, the whole thing had gone to Cody, who’d always found the notion comforting, like his mother’s spirit was somehow closer to him when he slept.
Thinking of his mother, Cody turned and saw Willet staring at him through the window.
Though his pulse quickened, his right hand going immediately to the Colt’s frigid handle, he could see right away that something was different about the boy. No, Cody amended, not different. The same as before, before the vampires had gotten him. It wasn’t just the boy’s features, which were wan and runneled with dirt and dried blood; it was something more, something fundamental, and for a long, breathless moment, Cody permitted himself to hope Willet might return to the way he’d been.
Then Cody remembered the way Willet had helped drain Gladys Wilson, and what hope he had vanished.
Cody scanned the window for signs of Martha Black, but nothing but Willet and the brightening southern sky presented itself. “You alone?” Cody asked in a low voice. Despite the panes of glass between them, he knew how keen Willet’s hearing was. In fact, he suspected the boy might be able to read his thoughts. Cody had several times thought that of Adam Price.
“It’s just me,” Willet said. Cody barely made it out, so weak was the boy’s voice. He didn’t want to venture any nearer—he’d seen what the vampires could do, how suddenly they could attack—but he had to get closer so he could ask Willet something.
“When you’re like this,” Cody said, the hand tight on the butt of his Colt. If Willet so much as scratched his nose, Cody would have the .38 out and blazing before the boy’s hand fell. “When you’re like this, are you partly human?”
Willet regarded him through the window, the same mournful cast to his face.
“What I mean is,” Cody went on, “do you think the same way? Feel the same as you used to? Inside, I mean?”
Willet said, “I don’t want to kill you.”
Cody was stunned to see the boy’s eyes fill with tears.
Watch it, he told himself. They’re actors, remember. Even if this creature was a boy not twenty-four hours ago, he’s one of them now. He’s a bloodsucker. And he’ll not scruple to bleed you the same way he bled Gladys.
Cody’s fingers stroked the Colt’s handle. He could sound the alarm, bring his dad in here to help him cut down Willet, but that would send things toward a rapid, ineffable conclusion, and Cody had no idea whether the outcome would be sweet or dire. What if he died and Marguerite became one of them? What if his dad, in the thrall of his new master, turned on his own son?
No! his mind screamed at the thought. Stop thinking like that.
“You don’t believe me,” Willet said. It wasn’t a question.
Cody fought off the wave of self-condemnation that threatened to scatter his concentration. “I can’t afford to believe you, Willet. Not after what I’ve seen.”
Willet nodded. “I like it when I’m drinking,” he said. “When I’m drinking, it feels like a hearth fire in my veins. I’m with Mama again. I’m like a
baby at the teat.”
“That’s somebody’s life you’re taking.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Willet said, his voice breaking. “I like it on the surface, but deep down I’m burying myself as far below as I can so I won’t think about it…I’m hidin’…but no matter where I try to go, I still know it’s murder.” His eyes riveted on Cody. Tears were streaming down his freckled cheeks. “I can’t do it anymore, Cody. You’ve gotta kill me.”
“Willet…”
“You’ve gotta kill me and my momma. I can’t take what we are. We’re doin’ what those bastards did the night they torched our ranch. They never even changed, Cody. Don’t you see that? Those monsters…Penders, Horton, the twins…” He looked at Cody pleadingly. “Even Mr. Price. They don’t need to have the change to do what they do. You see what that means, don’t you?”
Cody shook his head. “Willet, I—”
“It means they enjoy it! Enjoy slaughtering children and rippin’ the throats out of horses and taking down good men like my pa—” He broke off, a sob racking his body and stealing his voice.
Cody ran a shaking hand over his lips, forced himself to speak. “It’s my fault they got you, Willet. I’m so sorry. I shoulda—”
“It’s the danger of readin’ too many books.” Willet gave him a brief, poignant smile. “They tell you pretty lies and you get to believin’ ’em. Get to thinkin’ things are gonna work out like they should. Get to thinkin’ there’s justice. I could tell that about you right away, that you were still seein’ yourself in a book. That’s why you were holdin’ back. You kept tellin’ yourself something would happen to make you act like a hero, but that’s not how it is in real life. In real life you just gotta do somethin’ and hope it’s right. Things happen faster in real life.”
Cody’s voice was little more than a croak. “What do you want me to do?”
“If there ain’t no cure for what I’m becomin’—”
“There might—”
“There ain’t. Don’t think about that happenin’, Cody. The change is part of me now. I can feel it takin’ hold.” Willet’s voice got husky again, the boy pushing through his tears. “Even now I have a hard time lookin’ at you. I can smell you right now. I can smell the meat of your legs and the life bubblin’ in your throat. I…I…” Willet’s face twisted angrily, his eyes fierce and perhaps flecked with orange. “No,” he moaned. “I won’t do it anymore. I won’t hurt anyone else. Least of all you.”
Willet looked up at him with more sorrow than Cody would have thought it possible for one face to contain. “Cody, I…”
“Willet,” Cody said. “Willet, I wish to God there was a way…”
Willet smiled sadly. “You was my friend.”
The tears came then and there was nothing Cody could do to stop them. He shot a glance back at the interior door, not out of fear of the vampires, but because he didn’t want his father or Marguerite to see him this way. But Willet’s next words stopped his crying faster than anything else could have.
“Open the window, Cody.”
Cody stared unbelievingly at the boy. He waited for the rest of it, for the supplicating voice, the soft cajoling. But Willet only stared at him, his grimy face a pathetic mingling of doom and desperation.
“You know I can’t do that,” Cody said slowly.
“You don’t understand,” Willet said. “I’ll put my head over the sill so you can take care of things for me.”
Willet’s words echoed through Cody’s mind, but he couldn’t catch a sense of their meaning. So you can take care of things for me. So you can take care of things. Now what the hell…
Cody began to shake his head. “Come on now, Willet.”
“It’s the only way,” Willet pleaded. “I don’t wanna kill anymore, but if things go on like this, you know I’ll have to.”
Cody licked his lips. “You don’t have to kill, Willet. Why not go out in that barn there—”
“You don’t understand,” Willet said loudly enough to worry Cody that Mrs. Black might hear, wherever she was.
Cody motioned toward the barn. “Just go up there and pull some hay over you so the—”
“There ain’t no time!” Willet said, voice rising. “I’m holdin’ it off the best I can, but in a little while that won’t matter anymore. It’s comin’, Cody, I can feel it. Now please do this one thing for me so I can still go to heaven.”
Cody stared at the boy, incapable of speech.
“Please,” Willet urged. “Then you can do the same for my mama. I don’t know if her soul’s still right with…she’s done more killin’ than I have…but if there’s a chance…”
Cody slumped against the sill, deflating. Without meeting Willet’s gaze, he flicked open the lock and pushed up the window. It slid easily; his father always kept things well-oiled. When the outside air kissed Cody’s hands, he was sure the boy would dive at him through the window and fill his last moments with screaming and self-reproach.
But the boy did not attack. He merely waited for Cody to get the window up and then prop it ajar with the nearest thing he could find, which turned out to be the Bible. Cody wasn’t sure if this was ironic or apt, so he pushed it from his mind and strode over to the scythe that leaned against the wall. Coming back with it, he had another moment of uncertainty. It would be so easy for Willet, who was suddenly so fearsome and agile, to spring through the open window and attack. He remembered the way Willet had leaped out of the hayloft like some kind of mountain lion and later taken Cody down like he was nothing.
But Willet’s words scattered the images. “I don’t blame you, you know. Not for this, not for anything.”
Cody reached out, lifted the scythe. Its handle was very cold, very hard.
Cody stood over Willet. “I’m sorry I was too scared to help you the night they burned your ranch.”
Without looking up, Willet said, “Bein’ scared is what makes you different from them. You’re only scared because it matters to you what happens to people. They ain’t scared because they only care about themselves. About feeding themselves.”
“You’re letting me off too easy.”
“No, I ain’t. There’s nothin’ wrong with bein’ scared, Cody. Please do this before I lose that.”
You can’t do it, a voice declared in Cody’s head. You can’t kill a child.
I have to, he answered. I can’t fail him again.
He’s just a boy.
He won’t stay a boy for long, Cody thought and fingered the scythe handle. His palms had begun to sweat. Look at Horton. He’d been with Price for a long time, but he’d never aged. Is that what you want for Willet? For him to stay a child in body but a beast in mind and behavior?
No, he thought. It’s not what I want.
He was raising the scythe when Mrs. Black appeared in the left corner of the window.
“NO!” Mrs. Black roared, her eyes huge with panic.
“Please, Cody,” Willet breathed.
“YOU CAN’T HURT HIM!” Martha Black raged, lurching toward Willet.
Cody brought the scythe down as hard as he could, sure the stroke wouldn’t be powerful enough to decapitate the boy. But the blade had been kept sharp, and Cody’s aim was true. The curved blade cleaved through Willet’s neck cleanly and stuck in the floor. The head tumbled into the bedroom, the suddenly boneless body sliding backward out the window and pumping freshets of blood over the sill, the Bible, over Cody’s quivering hands.
Martha Black gaped at her son’s severed head. It lay facing her, so that Cody couldn’t see Willet’s final expression. But whatever it was that Martha Black saw on her son’s dead face robbed her of speech and held her immobile for an endless moment.
Slowly, her eyes rose. They riveted on Cody’s. Her expression darkened.
Then, she amazed him by stalking away.
Jack Wilson’s voice nearly made Cody jump out of his boots. “Where do you reckon she’s going?”
“Jesus, Dad,” Cody s
aid in a hoarse voice. He’d clapped a hand over his slamming heart, his other hand bracing himself against the wall.
His father went on as though speaking to himself. “She’s not giving up, that much is sure.”
“Course she isn’t,” Cody said, his breathing slowing enough so that it now approximated normalcy.
His dad was gazing at the floor, but Cody could see he was thinking hard. It was the way his father looked whenever he was concentrating his considerable intellect on a particularly irksome problem.
But before Jack Wilson said anything, they both heard the plangent screech of shattering glass. It had come through the wall. It had come from the other bedroom.
Cody looked at his dad, who stared back at him with huge eyes.
“Dad,” he started to say, but before the word was out, Jack Wilson was lurching toward the bedroom door.
Cody hustled after him, the .38 up and cocked. He made it into the bedroom on his father’s heels and saw what he’d feared.
Martha Black was scuttling over the top of the armoire.
Martha Black was going after Marguerite.
The Schofield exploded in the dim bedroom, the bullet slamming the woman in the top of the head. Without pause, Jack Wilson limped over to Martha Black’s slumped figure, reached up, and began to drag her off the armoire.
His dad said, “Hand me the—” But when he saw Cody, he bared his teeth. “Dammit, boy, get me that scythe!”
Cody jolted, realizing his mistake. He whirled and bolted through the door, damn near slipping on the hardwood floor in the hallway, and then he was in the room where Willet’s head lay gaping at the window in eternal surprise.
Cody averted his eyes and bent to retrieve the scythe. He froze, his fingers curled around the handle.
From the other room, his father was screaming.
“Dammit,” Cody muttered as he reeled toward the door. The scythe handle was slick in his grip, Willet’s blood having doused it after its wicked blade did its business. The noises from the other bedroom had ceased, which Cody took for a very bad sign. He made it down the hallway in three long strides and lunged through the doorway, expecting to see Martha Black guzzling his father’s blood the way she and her son had Gladys’s. But Jack Wilson was still very much alive.
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