by Brenda, Lady
The little minx! Some things never change, he thought.
He made his way over to her. Dahlia spied him and frowned, she waved her hand for him to beat it.
Jamie mouthed the words for her to come over to him. Dahlia shook her head, “No. I ain’t. I ain’t gonna budge no sirree!” she said.
Jamie stood and waited patiently.
She relented and came over to him. “Well ain’t you a sight for sore eyes?”
“Miss Esmeralda’s been asking after you,” he said.
Dahlia tossed her head. “I ain’t going back to the Salon. I’ve got me some new business here so scram!”
Jamie stood steadfast. He had held a secret crush on Dahlia since he had brought her to Esmeralda’s back door. He also knew she was one of them, like that gambler Devlin that pestered Miss Esmeralda. Jamie himself had once been one of the forgotten but he had scratched and clawed his way in this harsh town so he would not end up like his mother, a hollow empty shell. He had acquired the gift of single-minded purpose and with that he grasped Dahlia by one of her slender arms and pulled her out of the room. She wriggled and protested but no one noticed.
“Get yer, hands off en me! I ain’t going nowheres with you.”
When they were outside he let her go. He tugged off his hat and apologized. “I’m real sorry, Miss Dahlia, but Miss Esmeralda needs you.”
Dahlia looked up into his earnest face and her anger faded.
Ain’t nobody ever called me Miss Dahlia. Jamie is good. A genuine good person who ain’t been poisoned by evil, greedy and heartless trash, she thought.
Nevertheless, she placed her hands on her hips. “Is that so? well what’s in it fer me?”
Jamie sighed. “I don’t rightly know. I was just sent to fetch you. My guess is that Miss Esmeralda wants to help that gambler Devlin Winter.”
Dahlia’s eyes widened. She had not expected to join forces with anyone let alone Devlin’s woman. Ligea had tossed her out like a field slave. Devlin would need all the help he could get against the Zombie and his rotten pack of killers. Wordlessly she linked arms with Jamie and let him lead her away. As they walked down the dark streets together she was acutely aware of him beside her, young, fresh and full of red coursing blood. Temptation rose high inside of her. At the corner of C and Union Street she suddenly stopped and pulled away.
Jamie looked down. “What’s the matter?”
Dahlia shook her head. Inside she was fighting her hunger. “You go on ahead, I will catch up with ya come morning.”
“ Honest?”
“ Honest” she replied.
Reluctantly Jamie watched her go. He could not force her to come with him. He could only hope that she was as good as her word.
Lance woke up on the dirt floor of Wing’s Opium Den; a ramshackle dive that was really just a glorified tent that Wing had pitched on the outskirts of E Street. He felt energized and ravenous. He had vague memories of swilling a couple of gallons of Cactus wine, raping a Paiute squaw and tearing a trail through every bughouse and shebang on the Barbary Coast. He lurched to his feet and drew his coat up around his ears. The other wretched occupants of Wing’s tent slept on. Slack jawed and stupefied lumps, on grimy pallets.
Wing, an emaciated old Chinaman with long stringy hair and a handful of yellow teeth in his head sat cross legged at the entrance of the tent. He was frying what looked to be skinned rodents on bamboo sticks. He looked up when Lance walked by. “You want?”
Lance tossed him a coin. Just the thing to get his appetite piqued! He thought. He left the tent munching on a half cooked fried rat, oily juices running down his dirty face. When he finished he wiped his fingers on his coat, spit out some tiny bones and went in search of his crew.
He found them in a shanty on D Street snoring off the effects of bad whisky. After a brief count he noticed two missing but did not give it much credence. They were a wild bunch not worth a shit anyhow.
“Wake yer god damned asses up!” he shouted, as he kicked them awake. He was met by mumbles. “Yes, Boss”. When he had their attention he spoke. “We got us some work ta do, I want ya ta find a sourdough, name of Boots, and bring him to me at Wings in Chinatown by noon.”
They nodded and shuffled out of the shanty. Lance went in a different direction, towards C Street; he sniffed the air and pulled a sliver of a mirror from inside his coat. His rat snack had made him sharp set for another type of flesh and he had a hunch on where he might find some.
Boots came down from the hills with a spring in his old bones. The night before last he had found a thumbnail size nugget outside of the entrance to his mine. A little stake that would keep him in whiskey and bacon for a week! He headed toward the boardwalk and his favorite watering hole, the Red Garter Saloon, to quench his thirst. He tied Daisy to the hitch rail, straightened and dusted off his coat and went inside.
An hour later, happily sauced, he ambled out whistling “Dixie”. A sudden melancholy overtook him and he stopped short. Vivid memories of his childhood swam through his mind. He remembered skipping and playing in the fields of his family’s tobacco farm in South Carolina and fishing in the old stream behind the smoke house. He vaguely noticed a dark shape pass him on the boardwalk.
The next moment a burlap bag was thrown over his head and he was bludgeoned into unconsciousness. As his mind drifted through the darkness, he saw the face of a kindly old woman. Her dark raisin eyes bore into him with pity as she puffed on her corncob pipe. “Don’t be afeared “ she said. “ Yer mammy and pappy’s waiting fer ya up yonder.”
Daisy threw up her head, ears pricked, as she watched her master being dragged away. She brayed mournfully and pulled at her lead-rope but to no avail.
At the very end of E Street, next to the cemetery, stood the establishment of Thaddeus Meeks Undertaker. Thaddeus was a solitary man more at home with the dead than the living. Tall and cadaverous he dressed in a rusty black suit and a stovepipe hat, which he rarely removed. After he had completed his work for the day he enjoyed taking walks through the cemetery at dusk. It gave him a sense of satisfaction to see the headstones of the dead that he had personally prepared for their final rest. It was there one evening in the twilight, while he was while taking his evening stroll, that he met the widow. She was standing motionless under a skeletal, leafless tree and a long black lace veil covered her face. A shy and self-conscious man, Thaddeus had never been close to a live woman before. Compelled, he approached her. She lifted her veil to reveal a mass of tight curly blond hair, pale white skin and eyes that shone like blue diamonds. He asked if she would like to walk with him and they set off together through the vast cemetery. She was a librarian, she had said which interested him, for he had a love of books as well, especially, he’d told her, those written by Edgar Allan Poe.
When the darkness fell they went their separate ways. They met again the next night and he presented her with a pale flower. When she smiled in thanks he could feel a blush rise up to his cheekbones.
When the darkness fell on the third day, they walked side by side through the gravestones. All of a sudden she whirled and embraced him. Stunned, and overjoyed, he hardly noticed she had sunk her teeth into his neck. From that time onwards he became her willing donor and a dark love blossomed between them. She had promised to turn him before the Vampire Ball so that they could celebrate their commitment of eternal love together. At the moment he hovered on the edge of mortality and he looked forward to a life without death with his beloved.
Today is the day, he mused.
He felt happy as he put the final finishing touches on a new pine coffin. The bell on his front door jingled and pulled him from his reverie. He looked up to see a large man in a buffalo hide coat enter his shop.
“Can I help you mister?” he asked.
The man’s lips twitched into a semblance of a smile. He looked down and glanced into a shiny object that he held in his palm. Alarm rose in Thaddeus’ breast, his senses came fully alert.
“Well, yes
sir. I think youse got something I need.”
The undertaker backed away.
Lance chuckled. “You vultures know everything that happens in this town. I want to know about the Bloodsuckers.”
Thaddeus shook his head. “I don’t know what you are talking about, mister.”
Lance sprang forward and whipped out his Bowie knife. He waved it in front of Thaddeus’ face. “Yer a lyin’ sack of shit! I got me a glimpse a ya, and I can smell it on ya nohow.”
Thaddeus backed further away. He had no defense. He was not a full Vampire and had no powers. He didn’t even have a gun as he abhorred firearms. When he felt the bite of the knife against his throat he blubbered, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he spilled his guts and told the man everything that he knew about the Vampires of Virginia City. When he finished Lance released him but only for a moment. Just long enough for him to whip a hickory stake out of his coat and plunge it into Thaddeus’ breast.
While Thaddeus writhed in agony, Lance took out his bowie knife and carved him up like a deer, tasting a morsel here and there, for good measure.
He wiped his knife on the dead man’s coat and left Thaddeus’ shop humming a discordant tune. He patted his paunch.
“ I’m fixin ta git warmed up! That undertaker was just a snack. I can’t wait to taste the flesh of Devlin Winter fried up with some of Wing’s noodles,” he mused.
The sun did not set in Virginia City, nestled as it was against peaks of Mt. Davidson. The night fell instead over the town, like every other night, the way a dark curtain would fall over the stage of a Victorian melodrama. In this setting, death and life in this town was punctuated by the sound of black powder bullets.
Inside his mansion on B Street Big Jim was at home. He sat down to a hearty supper of roast beef, potatoes and glazed carrots and all if it washed down with fine red wine. Then his Chinese servant entered the room and bowed. Big Jim didn’t like to be interrupted in the middle of his feast. He glanced up from his plate and barked at him.
“What is it, Chow? Can’t you see I’m eating?”
“A man to see you,” Chow said.
Big Jim threw down his napkin. “God damn it, who is it? Tell him to wait.”
Chow bowed his head again. “His name is Peabody and he is most insistent.”
Big Jim frowned. How dare that carrion bird come to my house! What if the neighbors see someone like Lance coming around? Best to get rid of him quick!
He got up from the table
“Show him in,” he said.
Chow left and seconds later Lance entered the room. He paused then looked around at all the elegant furnishings and sneered.
“Ya got yerself set up real nice, Diamond, fancy doodads and all.”
“What do you want, Lance? Couldn’t it wait until tomorrow?”
“I brung ya somethin’. A sorta peek at what’s ta come.” He reached into his coat and pulled out a limp, bloodied patch of white hair and flung it down next to Big Jim’s plate.”
“What the hell? What is this?”
Lance grinned. “It’s the scalp of’n that sourdough Boots, ya won’t have ta worry about that old buzzard no more.”
Bile rose in Big Jim’s throat. He swallowed it down. He had unleashed this monster and now he was finally getting some results. With Boots out of the way he would hire a gang of miners to bust their way into the shaft of the Gilded Bird.
“What about Devlin Winter?” he asked.
Lance shrugged. He helped himself to a glass of Big Jim’s wine and gulped it down in one swallow. He wiped his lips with his hand before answering. “It won’t be long till I carve him up fer good, just you make… no never mind.”
Big Jim grinned slyly. He filled up Lance’s glass then poured another one out. “Let’s drink to that!”
Word of the Undertaker’s horrible death reached the Vampire community swiftly. Ligea though stunned and disturbed by it stubbornly refused to contact Devlin or to be drawn in to his war. She had heard rumors of Big Jim, the Gilded Bird, and the disturbing events that had taken place in the mine. She had not heeded to them. In her mind the survival and protection of the Hive must come first. A meeting of the council was needed and she sent her doorman with notes to all the members. As she waited for them to arrive she paced back and forth across her parlor, her brain filled with curses for Devlin, and the danger he had stirred up in her town. Presently she heard a knock and her paramour, Virgil brought her news.
“They are here.”
“Show them in,” she said.
Virgil did as directed and led a small group of four people into the parlor. Ligea asked them to sit while she remained standing.
“ I have just heard the news of Thaddeus, a tragedy, and one that shall not go unavenged. Virgil and I will look into this matter, but for now I warn you, we must do nothing.”
The council shifted in their seats. A blond woman, Thaddeus’ librarian, who was dressed in a severe, black bombazine spoke up.
“We cannot let this stand, Domina Ligea. Since when have we become the prey?”
Ligea could see that the Widow was holding back her tears.
“No, we must not react. Devlin Winter has heaped this on us and he must be the one to deal with it. We cannot risk the safety of the community especially on the eve of our Grand Ball.”
“Let me talk to him, make him deal with this mess,” Virgil pleaded.
Ligea was adamant. “No, we must not take any action, not yet.”
“What about Dahlia? She is sticking her nose into everything up on C Street and beyond.” This comment came from another one of the Council members, a prominent mine owner.
Ligea made a sound. “She is a bane. A little troublemaker I should have never taken her in. I know this concerns all of us but I must ask you, and the rest of the community, to wait. Devlin must be the one to make this right. I believe there is more that has been revealed through this attack. An age old enemy threatens all the Vampires in Virginia City. One that Devlin and his business have unleashed.”
“What could that be?” the mine owner asked.
Ligea took a long drag from her cigarette. She blew the smoke out slowly.
“A Zombie, my children, a flesh eater by the name of Lance Peabody along with his undead crew, who have a taste for Vampires.”
Chapter Nineteen
Cat and Mouse
Devlin’s shoulder hurt like the very devil. The styptic had stopped the bleeding and the whiskey kisses and lovemaking had dulled it temporarily. The pain was a reminder of what he was up against. He should not have come to the salon and endangered Esmeralda. Even now Peabody and his scum might be watching his every move. As quietly as he could he rose from her bed and dressed to leave.
Esmeralda sat up, naked except for a sheet that she clutched to her breast. Her hair fell around her shoulders in a wild tangle and she slid off the mattress to go to him. She placed her hand on his arm. Devlin looked down at her hand on his sleeve and paused.
“I am ready for the truth,” she said.
“Would that change things, Angel?”
Esmeralda drew the sheet closer. “It might give me a reason to stay and not to take the first train out of Virginia City in the morning.”
Devlin hesitated. He was not sure that he was ready to relive the past yet but he knew for certain that if he did not address it his Angel might very well disappear from his life again.
I could not endure that, he thought. Not after what we have become to each other.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and ran his fingers through his shoulder length black hair.
“Esmeralda, you know what I am.”
Esmeralda grasped one of his hands. “Talk to me Devlin. I need to understand.”
Devlin reached into an inside pocket of his vest and pulled out a small oval object and handed it to her. It was a miniature oil portrait of a blond woman dressed in the fashion of the seventeenth century.
Esmeralda stared at the portrait and she gasp
ed.
“Who is this?”
Devlin looked away. “Her name was Arabella, my wife and your very image, your doppelganger in another lifetime.”
“What happened to her? Is she at the center of this deadly game you are involved in? If so I want to know all of it not just what you have chosen to tell me. I won’t be a pawn ever again.”
Before he spoke again, Devlin poured himself a brandy from the decanter next to the bed. When he spoke there was a faraway look in his eyes.
“I grew up in a cold stone castle, the son of a brutal warlord and a Vampire. When my father died, not on the battlefield but between the legs of a tavern maid, I was sixteen years old with three younger brothers to care for. From that day forward I was dogged by a dark, shadowy, malevolent entity, one that flirted at the edge of my consciousness stealing the joy from my life.
By the time I reached twenty I had taken my father’s place as Lord both at the castle and on the battlefield. One morning when I was returning home after purchasing a new horse, a pall was lifted from my life. A bright golden light shone in the forest and as I got closer I saw it was the sunlight reflecting on the golden hair of a young woman. A delicate beautiful young woman dressed in a white flowing gown with a crown of flowers in her hair. She danced and skipped among the ferns to imaginary music. For a moment I thought that I had had come upon a forest nymph or even a fairy queen. Her name was Arabella and she had come to Transylvania as an orphan from the British Isles. She lived as the ward of a neighboring Lord. She was so different so full of life and laughter that I knew the instant I saw her that I must have her. Like a man possessed I pursued her. I heaped gold upon her guardian for her hand in marriage. Once permission was granted I married her hastily, perhaps impulsively. I wanted to capture and hold her as if she might disappear like fairy dust. My mother had warned me that Arabella was fey and not ‘of this world’. And she also warned that the shadow, the beast that stalked the house of Dracul also stalked my young wife. I ignored her dire prophecies. I also ignored Arabella’s strange behavior. Her obsession with the forest and its creatures her sudden mood swings and the nightmares that plagued her. I loved her without reason and thought she could do no wrong.