by Debra Dunbar
“An encyclopedia,” Birkett whispered, his hands reverentially opening it. “An encyclopedia of creatures of the night.”
The old priest blinked and passed a shaky hand across his face. He gave a nervous laugh.
“You must think me very strange, Mr. Tynes,” he said. “Forgive me. You deserve an explanation, but we are all in the gravest danger and it has near unnerved me.”
It didn’t seem so strange to Charles; he was in grave danger and there was every possibility others were too. But still he hesitated.
“What danger?” he said.
Birkett gathered himself, closed the book and began to pace the crypt.
“Think to your Bible, sir,” he said. “Remember, Satan was not cast down alone, and while the Father of Lies descended to the Pit, those that fell with him may not have accompanied him into the depths.”
“I’m familiar with this,” Charles said. Birkett’s sermons had expounded on the Fall, at considerable length. “What has it got to do with St. Mark’s? And why come seeking me?”
And why had the priest been so focused on his neck? He suppressed a shiver. Surely bloodsucker was a metaphor.
“Everything, Mr. Tynes.” The priest was suddenly in front of him, peering intently up at his face. “Does it call to you already? This creature of the night that has come here? Have you been seduced? Are your nights peaceful?”
“Peaceful, no,” Charles forced himself to admit. Creature of the night? “I’m not sleeping well. Not...seduced.”
If those nightly visions of Lady Margaret don’t count.
Waking, sheets twisted around him like a serpent, his sweating body still throbbing with lust, aching with need...
“You’re strong, then. Not easily swayed.” The priest stabbed Charles’ breastbone with his finger. “That’s what has saved you. That’s why we need you. That’s why I came to find you.”
“I don’t understand, Reverend. Who are we that you speak of? What creature?”
The priest resumed his pacing, seeming almost to crackle with a febrile energy as he spoke.
“We are a secret holy order, a small and dedicated society of brothers, who pursue them, Satan’s legions on earth, wherever they may hide and whatever fair disguises they may adopt. God has given us the light that will not be dimmed, and eyes that will not be deceived.”
In the candlelight, the priest’s eyes seemed to glow with the fire of his belief.
The priest’s them merged in his mind with those that conspired against him. Wolcott, Harney, Willoughby-Lazaure, Gilbee.
Yes, he could believe they were Satan’s own.
Birkett stopped again. “I am telling you because God has given you that same gift of true sight, if you but use it to this righteous end.”
“Me?” Charles blinked. “A gift?”
“Do you think your great engine at Nightwood is unknown? Whatsoever you have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; for nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest.” Birkett laughed. “God has given you a deeper understanding of his world, true sight, that you may create such engines, while men around you know only envy and greed.”
Charles swayed, stunned into silence.
“Turn that understanding on what has been happening in St. Mark’s,” Birkett said. “For many years, we have had a slim advantage in our long fight against what the slaves call Loa, but which are just manifestations of Satan’s legions. That all changed, and it changed on the day that Captain Laybourn sailed HMS Crescent into the harbor and unloaded a terrible cargo. Now the weaker devils of the Caribbean have an ally—a most powerful one.”
The second coffin. Charles wanted to blurt it out.
“And this book has revealed the creature’s nature to me,” Birkett returned to the altar and laid his trembling hands gently on the book.
There was a bookmark, and the priest opened to the place.
“A vampire,” he whispered. “Of the most pernicious kind, named in ancient Greek texts as Athanate, meaning deathless.”
He spun around, and Charles took an involuntary step back from the blaze of his eyes, as the man fell into the fire-and-brimstone manner of his sermons.
“It is the most subtle and wicked of the bloodsuckers. It is a creature that seduces its prey with earthly benefits, foul lies and disgusting rites of fornication. It is this very creature that is already enslaving the plantation workers in its evil plans, even as we speak. And unless we stop it, unless you stop it, it will raise them up against the God-fearing people of this island and it will butcher every person who refuses to fall under its spell.”
“The second coffin.” Charles’ mouth finally managed to work. “It’s in that second coffin.”
“No. It is at large,” hissed the priest. “Think on the deaths of this last month, Mr. Tynes. Use the gifts of perception that have been granted to you. The creature is winning the workers over to its cause by murdering plantation owners and managers.”
“The coffin’s important,” Charles said, trying to think logically. “It’s a vampire, for goodness sake. It sleeps in a coffin during the day.”
“I said it was a type of vampire,” Birkett replied. “We’re dealing with an Athanate, the most powerful of them. Such a creature would not have the weaknesses of being defenseless in the daytime. Yet, although legends are always exaggerations, they help us in identifying the creature. The coffin may be no more than an affectation. Or, God help us, another one of them, a lesser devil.”
The priest paused.
“It’s time for you to grasp the truth. To see the creature as it really is. To acknowledge that what appears to you as an attractive woman, calling itself Lady Margaret, is in fact an angel of hell.”
“No!” The word was torn from him, but even he could not say whether he was denying that she was a vampire, or exclaiming that he’d been so deceived.
The priest thought he knew.
“This is what I feared; the creature already has a grip on you,” the priest said. “Don’t you see? Your very denial is proof of that.”
“But—”
“Think, man! Have you ever seen such aversion to the Godly light of the sun? It walks in the day, when it has to, but under a parasol so thick and large the sunlight barely touches its body.”
Her body, pale as milk, twisting through his dreams like smoke. Bewitching him.
Those eyes, luring him. Those lips, whispering to him.
Hands, reaching for him.
He squeezed his eyes tight shut, trying to block the seductive visions in his head.
“It doesn't come to church,” Birkett said. “It dare not. And when I visit the plantations to preach to the workers, they shun me. They have been turned aside by this creature, and I see the marks of its work on their necks.”
“No,” Charles said. “She’s in league with the guild, not the devil.”
“If they are in league with her, then they must die too, my son, but the head must be struck off first.”
“She can’t be this...thing.” He shook his head, and the priest sighed.
“You are not a child, to be dazzled by the outward appearance,” he said. “The church is much to blame for this. We depict evil as ugly, for the simple man to better understand. And yet the truth is all in the Bible. Lucifer was an angel, full of wisdom, perfect in beauty, as all his legions were, and are. The mouth of hell is no fearsome wasteland; it looks like paradise on earth, else men would turn aside from it. The outward appearance lures the unwary, and all the corruption is hidden inside.”
The priest laid a hand on Charles’ arm, his voice quiet and full of sorrows. “Do not allow your immortal soul to be trapped by the embrace of what seems to be a beautiful woman,” he said. “Come, look on the works of my order and see for yourself.”
The book was still open.
It was full of margin notes, but Charles could barely read the Latin, let alone the Greek and other languages. His eyes instead went to the illustrations, painted on the pages in fading color
s, gold and red and blue. Pale faces, impossibly beautiful, looked up at him. One might have been Lady Margaret herself—the eyes, the lips.
The priest traced his finger along the Greek letters beside that face. “The beauty of a woman is the siren lure of hell,” he translated.
The crypt seemed airless and cramped, and Charles’ head hurt.
How else could she have persuaded him, if not by some devilish power? He’d signed over his engine for nothing.
Except the promise that they would marry and then he’d regain ownership of it all, his engine included.
But…Not yet. Too early. Be patient.
She would never marry him. It was all part of the trick that he fell for while she was confusing him with some spell that made it difficult to think clearly.
She’d deceived him. She’d used him all along.
Charles’ anger seemed rooted in the depths of his soul; it made him shake with its power.
His thinking wasn’t affected now. And there was one other way to get his engine back.
He was named as a beneficiary of the estate in the event of her death.
“I must go,” he said.
“Yes, go now, my son. Catch it unawares.” The old man draped the long strap of a leather satchel over his head as he spoke. “It will have come to trust you. It will not suspect until it is too late. That is why it must be you.”
Charles staggered up the steps and fought his way through the bolts and locks of the front door. All the while, Birkett was talking, talking, talking at him. The words were like blows to his head.
Do not show mercy...do not let it turn you aside...strike it in the heart...all the people of the island are depending on you...remember, however fair it seems, it is a foul creature of hell...
He fled into the dying storm, back down to the stables where his horse was waiting.
It wasn’t until he was riding clear of the town, that he thought to look in the satchel.
It contained sharp wooden stakes and a weighty, double-headed hammer, made of dark metal, in the shape of a crucifix.
Chapter 13
Charles
By the time he’d reached Caerdrys Park, at midnight, the storm had died away to a fitful breeze.
In the storm’s wake, a calmness had descended on St. Mark’s, as if the rain had washed away the tumult from the island. The full moon hung above his head and made silver reflections in the wetness of every shimmering leaf of every tree that lined the road, as if the night held a million eyes watching him.
He’d regained a measure of calm that he hadn’t known for months. Like the storm, his rage had passed through, leaving behind a flickering anger—my invention, she stole my engine from me, she deceived me, she used uncanny powers.
He dismounted, draping the reins over the gate, and proceeded noiselessly on foot.
The house was in darkness. The front door would be bolted, but anyway, he wanted to see that second coffin in the courtyard again. Perhaps that crowbar was still there.
He rounded the corner and his heart and footsteps both faltered.
The coffin was there, looming large on the table in the moonlit darkness. But the lid had been torn away with great force. It lay broken to one side.
Barely able to breathe, he crept forward until he could peer inside.
It was empty as...
...as a grave.
There was no smell of oils that he had detected from the presses in the other coffin. No smell of decay, either.
Vampires don’t decay.
He stood silently for a minute, hypnotized by the empty coffin, before quietly turning to search the rest of the courtyard.
A huge shadow loomed.
His throat was so tight, the scream never emerged. Instead, he fell backwards, his feet scrabbling to retreat, but the hulking monster that had terrified him did not move.
He stopped struggling, feeling foolish.
Whatever it was before him, it was not alive.
Not entirely comforting said a small voice in his head.
He got cautiously to his feet and approached it.
The darkness had made it look larger than it was. Not some monster, a damned statue.
The box, not a coffin, had held a statue. How stupid could he be?
He peered at it, traced fingers down the cold, smooth granite.
A woman, dressed in the ancient Greek style. The left hand raised, the right held out. Vaguely familiar, but missing something. As he thought that, his hand touched against a part that was not fixed, that had been leaning against the statue. He lifted it up. It was a huge, immensely heavy sword, and at the statue’s feet lay a set of scales. They were both made of metal and a quick check revealed they were intended to be held in the statue’s hands.
He squinted up at the head. She was blindfold.
He put the sword back down and stepped away.
It was simply a statue, awaiting its final assembly. A statue of Themis, the Greek demigod chosen as the symbol of justice to adorn courts all over the world.
Were this night’s events all insanity?
A box, not a coffin. Some unusual deaths, happening by chance. A crazy priest and an even crazier society with a book full of superstition. Angels cast down from heaven. Vampires and...whatever they were called…Athanate.
No! She stole my invention using unearthly powers. If she’s not Athanate, she’s a witch.
“What are you doing here?”
He spun around.
It was Agnes. She was stalking along the narrow parapet that protected the courtyard from the steep drop to the garden, her feet placed with the precision of a ballerina.
Stark naked!
Moonlight painted her black skin with the deepest blues, all shadow and relief, a magnificent chiaroscuro painting in the moody style of Rembrandt.
Bizarre.
“What in hell...cover yourself, woman,” he blurted.
“Why, Mr. Tynes? There should be no one I need to hide myself from, here in Caerdrys Park, in the middle of the night.”
The jolt of surprise he got, both from her behavior and the boldness of her answer, was immediately swamped when he heard a second voice behind him.
“What is going on here?”
He spun around the other way.
“Lady Margaret!” he said.
She must have come direct from her bed; she was clad only in an immodest silk nightdress. Her hair was free, floating out behind her like a dark cloud as she strode from the drawing room onto the paved courtyard.
She was the embodiment of his dreams made flesh. He felt weak, disoriented. His mind could not grasp how inexplicable this all seemed. He desperately wanted to say something, anything, and his hand waved at the maid.
“Your slave—”
“Agnes is not a slave,” Lady Margaret cut across him coldly. “She is my maid. So as to ensure you are in no doubt, I am utterly opposed to slavery and intend to free the Nightwood and Gilbee workers as soon as I can.”
He gasped. He knew the sugar industry, no one better. The production rates, the costs, the prices. This was sheer madness.
“Even with the production benefits of my engine,” he blustered, “you cannot survive if you do that.”
Of course he pitied the poor souls, kidnapped by slavers, and transported here to work until they died.
“We do what we can,” he went on. “Better food and water, shorter hours, more breaks from work. But we live within constraints. Prices in Europe are lower every year. They will not allow any method of production other than unpaid labor. Blame the markets that lured us into the industry and then refuse to pay more for their sugar. We are all trapped.”
“To speak of being trapped when we stand not three hundred yards from real slaves is an obscenity, Mr. Tynes!”
She paused, and visibly gathered herself to continue to berate him.
“My lady,” he stopped her. “You can’t free the workers. Not all of them, anyway. Gilbee is coming.” He took out t
he letter. “He’ll take back his plantation. I can’t honor—”
“We will discuss an arrangement with him when he arrives,” Lady Margaret said. “We signed an agreement to act together, Mr. Tynes, and I intend to hold to it.”
She took a step forward and he retreated.
When she spoke again, her voice was softer.
“Charles, listen to me. We are partners in this enterprise. I apologize for my secrecy. It is a force of habit which I must put aside for you.”
She paused, and clasped her hands in front of her.
He could feel his conviction slipping, the anger being drained. He could almost see her body through the nightdress, the way the silk caressed her skin, the promise of those shadowed eyes.
No. No. She stole my invention. I must remember that. I will not be prey to her witchcraft.
“My engine—” he said.
“Is safe in its barn, and belongs to you, regardless of what we must pretend until we have satisfied the guild.”
“But we cannot defeat the guild and free the slaves and pay Gilbee and get married…”
He was babbling, but he was fighting off her spell. He was doing it. She was not going to confuse him tonight.
“As I said, I have kept secrets from you. I am sorry, Charles. We must not have secrets from each other, if we are to wed. The truth is, I have been disinherited and sent here to Nightwood as punishment for my support of Abolition, and my membership in a group dedicated to render all men and women equal in the sight of the law. That statue, which I commissioned for our home in Wiltshire, is the symbol of the group and the trigger that finally made my father act. He believes exiling me here is a punishment because he knows Parliament will abolish slavery, regardless of what he argues for, and as a result, the whole Leeward Islands archipelago will descend into revolt and ruin.”
“He’s right!” Charles said. “Even without Abolition, Saint Domingue shows what happens when people are not vigilant, and fail to control the situation.”
“I intend to show that the earl is wrong,” she said.
He staggered back in bewilderment as she continued.
“With your production systems, and free men and women who are shareholders in the businesses for which they work, we can create a just, free and equal society here in St. Mark’s. Not based on cheaper sugar for Europe, but on what that society needs here.”