by Death
In the overall scheme of the world, I judged myself to be of considerably more value than Ash, Drummond, or any of the others in their miserable, brutal troop of killers.
So be it.
Now I had to find a way of arranging things to my advantage.
We crested the top of the slope, and the wind clawed at my inadequately protected body like a vengeful animal. I was shivering again and held on to Drummond for warmth as well as support. Snow clung to our boots, slowing us. Ash cursed as he struggled along in our footsteps.
The other side of the slope led down to the Sound. Had I known we were this close to it, I'd have made some mention in my note to Father. This part of the coast was vaguely known to me, and my heart rose a little. It was absurdly comforting to find I wasn't totally lost in an unknown land.
The water was gray and dangerous in the tormenting wind; I should not have cared to venture onto its restless surface in such weather, and I worried that that was what Drummond and Ash were planning.
Making myself more of an impediment than usual, I managed to get Drummond to halt by having my legs give out completely.
"A moment, for pity's sake," I cried in a thin, strained voice.
Ash caught us up. "Keep movin', let's get it over with."
"What... what will you do with me?"
"What do ye think?" He grinned down, mistaking my need to have details for more cowardice.
"Tell me! I've a right to know!"
My forceful insistence set him back a little, but he was too grudging to provide an answer.
I looked up at Drummond. "Please, sir. Tell me. If these are my last moments, let me not disgrace myself further."
Reluctantly, he said, "Yer to be shot."
Interesting way to put it, I thought, as though someone else were to do the dirty work.
"With honor, as for a soldier?" I asked, my manner pleading for him to say yes.
"Aye, with honor." There was amusement deep in his eyes. I pretended not to see it.
Ash spat, clearly having no use for what he must have perceived as a useless and trivial concept except when it suited him. He was dancing from one foot to the other from the cold. "Let's git to it."
We reached a level spot on the slope and turned into the wind, taking a path that eventually wound itself down to the shoreline. The wind seemed to grab the air from my lungs, so it was just as well I had no need to breathe.
"Will you bury me?" I gasped out.
Drummond gruffly said, "At sea."
I looked past him at the heartbreakingly bleak water. Truly it was to be a cold, deep grave for me in every sense of the word.
He correctly interpreted my expression. "Have to. Orders."
"Orders from whom?"
He made no answer. Ash, probably. Or Knox. It hardly mattered.
We came to the point on the path where it went down to the shore, but Drummond ignored it and continued to go straight ahead, breaking a way through virgin snow. It was much deeper here and the footing more treacherous, but his size helped. He had tremendous strength and bulled through the increasingly higher drifts as though they weren't there. The extra exertion was of no benefit to my head whatsoever. All I could do was hang onto him for balance and try not to fall.
We were rather far from the house.
Good.
Drummond paused, waiting for Ash, who was having a harder time of it. The wind was dying, I noticed, and the sky... growing lighter. Even with the thick clouds of winter between me and the sun, I'd be unable to hold myself conscious once it cleared the horizon.
"Right," said Ash. "Put 'im over there."
I was guided to what I first thought to be a taller than usual drift. It proved to be a slight rise that cut off sharply on the other side. It dropped straight down into water. All they had to do was shoot me and roll the body off and let the sea carry it away or drag it to the bottom. It might never, ever be found.
Ash watched as I worked it all out and enjoyed my reaction of horror. Drummond remained impassive and told me I'd have to stand on my own.
"I-I should like a blindfold, please."
Ash's face transformed into a study of indignant amazement. "What?"
"May I not have a blindfold? I should find it easier to take what is to come if I don't have to see."
He was practically speechless. "Of all the-"
"A last request, sir."
He worked himself into a spate of name-calling and I winced and clung to Drummond like a child seeking shelter.
"Let 'im," said Drummond, as I'd hoped he would. He was exasperated, but with Ash, not me. Ash was using more time venting his anger than it would have taken to grant my request.
"What?"
' 'Tis not much to ask. 'E can use yer scarf." Without waiting, Drummond let go his hold on me and backed away.
Damnation. I'd wanted one of them to go back to the house in order to fetch something suitable. Separating them would have made things so much easier for me.
"Might I also have some Bible verses?" I asked with rapidly increasing desperation.
"Got none, lad."
Well. I should have expected as much from a house where no one could read.
"The blindfold," I said. "Please... I-"
Drummond looked expectantly at Ash. With more cursing and complaint, he reluctantly untied the length of scarf that held his hat in place. He had to give his pistol to Drummond in order to do it properly. When he came forward to wrap it around my eyes, I lifted one hand in a begging gesture.
"Please..."
"What now?"
"A moment to pray. Just a moment for a prayer. Just a-"
I got another curse for an answer, but he made no other objection. I sank down to one knee. Drummond was now too far away to reach, but Ash stood right before me, clutching the scarf, impatient to finish the job and get out of the cold. I bowed my head.
"Heavenly Father, forgive me my sins..." I began, and I meant it. To undertake such actions while in the middle of prayer must certainly be sinful, but I had no other choice left. Surely God would understand.
I smashed my fist into Ash's groin.
He made no scream; I think the agony was too great to be vocalized, but his face was eloquent as he doubled over and fell writhing into the snow. Then I forgot about him as Drummond came up.
He had the pistol ready and could not possibly miss at so short a distance. He was hardly two yards away, holding it centered upon my chest. The muzzle was as big as the door to hell, but I had to wrench my eyes from it to look at Drummond. Unlike the display I'd put on earlier, I would face my death, if that was what was to come. I'd survived other woundings, but was very weak now and unsure of what might happen next. I braced myself for the shot, glaring at him and trying to see if there was a soul behind his eyes.
He held off firing. Only stared. We stared at one another for what seemed like hours and I couldn't imagine why he was waiting. He paid no attention to Ash, who lay between us, curled around himself and grunting with agony; all he did was look right back into my eyes, unblinking, like a madman.
What was it? Was he hoping I'd beg? Why was he so still? Was it to break my nerve? What-?
Dawn. It was lighter now than...
Light. Enough light for him to see clearly. To see me. For me to...
With sudden comprehension, I staggered to my feet and told Drummond to throw his gun down. He did. I told him to get on his knees. He did. His impassive face remained the same, hard as stone... maybe just a little vacant about the eyes. That had been the delay for me; I didn't know him well enough to read any inner changes when my influence had taken him over.
My hunger, held in abeyance by so many distractions, now clawed its way back. Ravenous. Undeniable.
Unsteadily, I walked around Ash until I was quite close to Drummond. I told him to shut his eyes. He did. Then, with trembling fingers, I ripped away his rag of a neckcloth.
What came next didn't take long. Fortunate, since it was singular
ly unpleasant.
Except for the blood, of course.
I pushed his head away and to one side to draw the skin taut over his exposed throat. The scent coming through it- the bloodsmell-overmatched the stink of his unwashed skin and clothing. My teeth were out and my belly gave an inward twist, anticipating. Bending low, I cut hard into him, breaking through the tough skin and drinking in that first glorious swallow of life as it flooded forth.
He made a gagging sound once, and not long after sobbed once, but otherwise held himself as quietly as any of the other beasts I'd fed on in the past.
His blood was different. Tainted in some way I couldn't identify, but I liked the taint. It was comparable to the kind of difference one finds between beef and venison. Both fill you, but one has the tameness of the farm and the other yet holds to the wildness of the wood.
I drank deeply and well and felt the heat of it warming me from the inside out. Strength I thought lost returned and the pain... the dreadful pain from the disastrous blow he'd inflicted began to subtly fade. It had been so constant that it seemed strange not to have it anymore.
Pain gone, hunger abated... no...fulfilled. I'd never had better.
When I drew away and licked my lips clean, I found that I'd never taken such total satisfaction from any food in all my life. Perhaps it was because it had been human blood, perhaps it was because it had come from an enemy and was suffused with his fear of me, for Drummond was shuddering with it. Tears from his now wide-open eyes streamed down his cheeks. At some point he'd woken up from my influence and had been hideously aware of all that was happening to him.
I breathed in a great draught of air through my open mouth and released it as laughter. It soared up and was caught by the last of the wind and whipped away into the brightening sky.
It... was not a wholesome sound. And when it died away, I felt ashamed.
But why? I'd fed from a man as I'd have fed from any brute beast, and the wild predators of the world feel no shame for what they must do. They kill in order to live; that was their nature as given to them by God. I had been no different prior to my change, having eaten animal flesh, having killed in order to live. I'd felt the triumph of a successful hunt, but this... wasn't the same.
Then I understood. My sudden shame came not from my change, but rather from the fact that I'd used my new abilities to play the bully. I'd taken enjoyment from this man's terror. There's a vile streak of that kind of cruelty in all of us, and I'd given into it.
Bad. Very bad of me. I could imagine what Father might have to say about this; he'd been clear enough on the subject when I'd been growing up. Though I was no longer a boy tussling with others in Rapelji's schoolyard, the principle remained the same.
"Please... don't kill me," Drummond whispered, his voice broken and dry. He was deathly white, but nowhere near to dying. Yet.
Right. He was begging me for his utterly useless, damaging life. Begging for life from the man he'd been ready to kill without the least thought or regret.
"Please..."
A hundred caustic retorts to that sprang to my lips, but never came forth. What would be the point? He was what he was, a killer and a thief, and whatever I said would not change him.
Or would it?
I knew I'd have to protect myself from him anyway.
With another laugh, short and more bitter this time, I said, "Look at me. Look at me and listen..."
And he did.
I finished with him fast enough, leaving him with no memory of what he'd been through, only a deep desire to seek an honest path for himself in the world. It both soothed and galled me, for I knew I was at least trying to do the right thing, but my baser side wanted very much to throw him over the cliff as he had meant to do to me. So I might have done in a hot rage, but not now. There was no need. Besides, his death was not worth having on my conscience.
He was asleep, or in a state close to it, and would remain so until Ash woke him up. Ash himself had been too lost in his own trouble to be aware of what had occurred but a few yards from him. His back was to us, so I wasn't worried that he had seen any of it. I walked over and nudged him with a foot.
He burst out with a very creative string of curses, not the wisest thing to do, but then I'd already noticed his singular shortage of brain and could shrug off the abuse. It did stop, however, when he saw I had the pistol in my hand.
He gaped, then started to cry out something, a call to Drummond for help, I thought, but I slapped the other hand over his mouth and informed him that he'd get a second punch between the legs if he made another sound. That shut him up completely and he lay silent as I searched him for those items of mine he'd claimed for himself out of the robbery, namely a gold snuff box and my money purse. I also found another pocketful of coins, and a surprising quantity at that, which I thought might have come from other victims. This I put in with my own money. I had no need of it, but intended to turn it over to Father with the request that he donate it to our church. Doubtless that good place could put the funds to a better use than any Ash had ever planned.
It was growing lighter by the minute. If I was to try my influence with Ash, it would have to be-
" 'Old right there, you!"
I looked up to see Abel and Seth standing just this side of the kneeling Drummond. Abel had a pistol of his own, and it was pointed at me. I hadn't heard their approach. I wondered how long they'd been watching and how much they'd seen. Too much, from the stricken looks they wore. Abel kept trying to steal glances at the oblivious Drummond, which made it hard for him to hold his weapon level.
"Devi/!" he shrieked when he saw the blood on Drummond's throat. "Ye filthy devil!" His hatchety face went red with outrage and disgust and fear. The gun went off. It may have been an accidental firing or not, but he was so upset that it spoiled his aim. The thing roared and the air was clouded with sudden smoke, but the ball completely missed me. He had one instant to regret it, less than a blink of an eye, and I was upon him.
A clout on the jaw was all that was needed. He was stunned, senseless and unresisting. I turned on Seth, but he'd backed away, jaw sagging and eyes popping, too frightened to move. As he watched, I dragged my cloak from his brother's body.
Ash was on his hands and knees and bellowing at Drummond, who looked to be waking up. Damnation to them. If I had more time I could have stayed, changed their memories to my advantage, but the dawn was against me. I had ten minutes, no more and very probably much less. It was hard to tell for the clouds.
I had to get out.
Slogging away from them over the open snow field was the best I could do. I threw the cloak around my shoulders and pulled it close, grateful for the brothers' greed. The only reason I could think why they'd followed out after us was for Seth to lay claim to my boots before his friends dropped them-along with my body-into the Sound. Abel may have come to try for them himself one more time, that, or to enjoy the execution.
I walked as quickly as possible, wanting distance between myself and the growing row behind me. Ash's voice rose high over the wind, suffused with anger. I looked back once and saw him on his feet, shaking a fist at me. Without a doubt, he was a dangerous man, but also stupid and incredibly foolish; I still had the pistol.
A perverse fancy took me. I stopped and turned, arm out in the best dueling style, my pose and posture unmistakable. He ceased moving, caught between horror and surprise. I pulled the trigger and felt the recoil jolt up my arm. The thing made a grand roar and I had the satisfaction of seeing Ash and the others duck in dismay. They weren't injured, I'd aimed just over their heads, but by the time they found enough courage to look again, they'd not be able to see me. I took that moment as the right time to vanish.
The thought belatedly came that they'd follow my trail. They'd find the discarded pistol and my tracks ending in the middle of the field as though I'd vanished into the air, which, indeed, I had. Well, it was too late now. Let them puzzle it out and be damned.
Glad I was that the win
d had died. There was just enough of it now to give me a direction to push against, which I did with all my strength and will. I sped south and then west toward home, though I had not the faintest possibility of reaching it in time.
Panic?
Very likely.
There was also the hope that once I'd put enough distance between myself and that band of patriotic cutthroats, I could go solid, get my bearings and find some shelter for the day. All I needed was a shack or barn, someplace to hide from the approaching sun.
I hurtled forward for as long as I dared, then re-formed. The light was nearly blinding. The snow-blanketed fields reflected it, increased it. I shaded my eyes and searched all around for cover. Nothing, absolutely nothing, presented itself.