Sour Billy pulled free his knife while Armand bent to attend to his whimpering victim. In the moonlight, the blood running down the blade looked almost black. Billy started to clean it in the pool, then hesitated. He raised the knife to his lips and licked at the flat of it tentatively. Then he made a face. Tasted awful, not like in his dreams at all. Still, that would change when Julian made him over, he knew.
Sour Billy washed his knife and sheathed it. Damon Julian had given Richard over to Kurt, and was standing solitary, gazing up at the moon. Sour Billy approached him. “Saved us some money,” he said.
Julian smiled.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Aboard the Steamer Fevre Dream,
Natchez,
August 1857
For Abner Marsh, that night went on and on. He had a small snack, to settle his stomach and calm his fears, and soon thereafter retired to his cabin, but sleep would not take him easily. For hours he lay staring at the shadows, his mind racing, his thoughts a jumble of suspicion and anger and guilt. Beneath the thin, starchy sheet, Marsh sweated like a hog. When he did sleep, he tossed and turned and woke often, and dreamed flushed, furtive, incoherent dreams of blood and burning steamboats and yellow teeth and Joshua Anton York, standing pale and cold beneath a scarlet light with fever and death behind his angry eyes.
The next day was the longest day Abner Marsh had ever known. All his thoughts led him round and round and back to the same place. By noon he knew what he must do. He’d been caught, no help for it. He had to fess up and have it out with Joshua. If that meant the end of their partnership, so be it, although the thought of losing his Fevre Dream made Marsh feel sick and weary, as full of despair as he had been the day he’d seen the splinters the ice had made of his steamers. It would be the end of him, Marsh thought, and perhaps it was all he deserved for betraying Joshua’s trust. But things could not go on as they were. Joshua ought to hear the tale from his own mouth too, Marsh decided, which meant that he had to get to him before that woman Katherine did.
He spread the word. “I want to be told, the moment he gets back,” he said, “no matter when it is, or what I’m about, come fetch me. You hear?” Then Abner Marsh waited, and took what solace he could in a lovely dinner of roast pork and green beans and onions, with half a blueberry pie afterward.
Two hours shy of midnight, one of the crew came to him. “Cap’n York’s come back, Cap’n. Got some folks with him. Mister Jeffers is settlin’ them into cabins.”
“Has Joshua gone up to his cabin?” Marsh asked. The man nodded. Marsh snatched up his walking stick and made for the stairs.
Outside York’s cabin, he hesitated briefly, threw back his ample shoulders, and brought the head of his stick sharply against the door. York opened on the third knock. “Come in, Abner,” he said, smiling. Marsh stepped inside, shut the door behind him, and leaned against it, while York crossed the room and resumed what he’d been doing. He’d set out a silver tray and three glasses. Now he reached for a fourth. “I’m glad you came up. I’ve brought some people aboard I want you to meet. They’ll be coming up for a drink as soon as they’ve settled into their staterooms.” York pulled a bottle of his private drink from the wine rack, produced his knife, and sliced off the wax seal.
“Never mind about that,” Marsh said brusquely. “Joshua, we got to talk.”
York set the bottle down on the tray and turned to face Marsh. “Oh? What of? You sound upset, Abner.”
“I got spare keys to every lock on this boat. Mister Jeffers keeps ’em for me in the safe. When you went into Natchez, I got myself a key and searched your cabin.”
Joshua York scarcely moved, but when he heard Marsh’s words his lips pressed together slightly. Abner Marsh looked him straight in the eye, as a man ought at a time like this, and felt coldness there, and the fury of betrayal. He would almost rather Joshua had screamed at him, or even drawn a weapon, than look at him with such eyes. “Did you find anything of interest?” York asked finally, in a voice gone flat.
Abner Marsh wrenched himself away from Joshua’s gray eyes, and jabbed his stick at the desk. “Your ledgers,” he said. “Full of dead men.”
York said nothing. He glanced briefly at the desk, frowned, and sat himself down in one of his armchairs and poured out a measure of his thick, vile drink. He sipped it, and only then gestured to Marsh. “Sit down,” he commanded. When Marsh was seated across from him, York added one final word: “Why?”
“Why?” Marsh said, a bit angrily. “Maybe cause I’m tired of havin’ myself a partner who don’t tell me nothin’, who don’t trust me.”
“We had a bargain.”
“I know that, Joshua. And I’m sorry, if that matters. Sorry I did it, and a damn sight sorrier I got caught.” He grinned ruefully. “That Katherine saw me leave. She’ll be talkin’ to you. Look, I should have come direct to you, told you what was eatin’ at me. I’m doin’ that now. Maybe it’s too late, but here I am. Joshua, I love this boat of ours much as I ever loved anything, and the day we take the horns off the Eclipse is goin’ to be the grandest day of my life. But I been thinkin’, and I know I got to give up that day, and this steamer, rather than go on like we are. This river is full of scoundrels and sharpers and Bible-thumpers and abolitionists and Republicans and all manner of queer folk, but you’re the queerest of the lot, I swear. The night hours I don’t mind, they don’t fret me none. Books full of dead people, that’s somethin’ else, but it ain’t nobody’s business what a man cares to read. Why, I knew a pilot on the Grand Turk kept books that’d make even Karl Framm turn red with shame. But these stops of yours, these trips off by yourself, it’s those I can’t suffer no more. You’re slowing my steamer, damn you, you’re ruinin’ our name before we even made it. And Joshua, that ain’t all. I seen you the night you come back from New Madrid. You had blood on your hands. Deny it if you will. Cuss me if you want. But I know. You had blood on your hands, damned if you didn’t.”
Joshua York took a long drink, and frowned as he refilled his glass. When he looked at Marsh, the ice had melted in his eyes. He looked thoughtful. “Are you proposing we dissolve our partnership?” he asked.
Marsh felt like a mule had kicked him in the stomach. “If you want, you got that right. I ain’t got the money to buy you out, of course. But you’d have the Fevre Dream, and I could keep my Eli Reynolds and maybe show a profit with her, send you a little as it come in.”
“Is that the way you’d prefer it?”
Marsh glared at him. “Damn you, Joshua, you know it ain’t.”
“Abner,” York said, “I need you. I cannot run the Fevre Dream by myself. I am learning a little of piloting, and I’ve become somewhat more familiar with the river and its ways, but we both know I am no steamboatman. If you left, half of the crew would go with you. Mister Jeffers and Mister Blake and Hairy Mike for certain, and no doubt others. They are loyal to you.”
“I can order ’em to stay on with you,” Marsh offered.
“I would rather you stayed on. If I agree to overlook your trespass, can we continue as before?”
The lump in Abner Marsh’s throat was so thick he thought he would choke on it. He swallowed, and said the hardest thing that he had ever said, in all his born days: “No.”
“I see,” said Joshua.
“I got to trust my partner,” Marsh said. “He’s got to trust me. You talk to me, Joshua, you tell me what all this is about, and you got yourself a partner.”
Joshua York grimaced, and sipped slowly at his drink, considering. “You will not believe me,” he said at last. “It is a more outlandish story than any of Mister Framm’s.”
“Try it out on me. Can’t do no harm.”
“Oh, but it can, Abner, it can.” York’s voice was serious. He put down his glass and went over to the bookcase. “When you searched,” he said, “did you look at my books?”
“Yes,” Marsh admitted.
York pulled out one of the untitled volumes in the leather bindings, returned
to his chair, and opened it to a page full of crabbed characters. “Had you been able to read it,” he said, “this book and its companion volumes might have enlightened you.”
“I looked at it. Didn’t make no sense.”
“Of course not,” York said. “Abner, what I am about to tell you will be difficult for you to accept. Whether you accept it or not, however, it must not be repeated outside the confines of this cabin. Is that understood?”
“Yes.”
York’s eyes wondered. “I want no mistake this time, Abner. Is that understood?”
“I said yes, Joshua,” Marsh grumbled, offended.
“Very well,” Joshua said. He put his finger on the page. “This code is a relatively simple cipher, Abner, but to break it you must first realize that the language involved is a primitive dialect of Russian, one that has not been spoken in some hundreds of years. The original papers transcribed in this volume were very, very old. They told the story of some people who lived and died in the area north of the Caspian Sea many centuries ago.” He paused. “Pardon. Not people. Russian is not among my best languages, but I believe the proper word is odoroten.”
“What?” said Marsh.
“That is only one term, of course. Other languages have other names. Kruvnik, védomec, wieszczy. Vilkakis and vrkolák as well, although those two have somewhat different meanings from the others.”
“You’re talkin’ gibberish,” Marsh said, although some of the words Joshua was reciting did kind of ring familiar, and sounded vaguely like the gibble-gabble Smith and Brown were always spouting.
“I won’t give you the African names for them, then,” said Joshua, “or the Asian, or any of the others. Does nosferatu have meaning for you?”
Marsh regarded him blankly.
Joshua York sighed. “How about vampire?”
Abner Marsh knew that one. “What kind of story you tryin’ to tell me?” he said gruffly.
“A vampire story,” said York with a sly smile. “Surely you’ve heard them before. The living dead, immortal, prowlers of the night, creatures without souls, damned to eternal wandering. They sleep in coffins filled with their native earth, shun daylight and the cross, and each night they rise and drink the blood of the living. They are shape-changers as well, able to take the forms of a bat or a wolf. Some, who utilize the wolf form frequently, are called werewolves and thought to be a different species entirely, but that is an error. They are two sides of a single dark coin, Abner. Vampires can also become mist, and their victims become vampires themselves. It is a wonder, multiplying so, that vampires have not displaced living men entirely. Fortunately, they have weaknesses as well as vast power. Though their strength is frightening, they cannot enter a house where they have not been invited, neither as human nor animal nor mist. They wield great animal magnetism, however, the force Mesmer wrote about, and can often compel their victims to ask them in. But a cross will send them fleeing, garlic can bar them, and they cannot cross running water. Though they look much like you and I, they have no souls, and therefore are not reflected in mirrors. Holy water will burn them, silver is anathema to them, daylight can destroy them if dawn catches them away from their coffins. And by severing their heads from their bodies and driving a wooden stake through their hearts, one can rid the world of them permanently.” Joshua sat back and took up his drink, sipped, smiled. “Those vampires, Abner,” he said. He tapped the book with a long finger. “This is the story of a few of them. They are real. Old, eternal, and real. A sixteenth-century odoroten wrote this book, about those who had gone before him. A vampire.”
Abner Marsh said nothing.
“You do not believe me,” said Joshua York.
“It ain’t easy,” Marsh admitted. He tugged at the coarse hairs of his beard. There were other things he didn’t say. Joshua’s talk of vampires didn’t bother him half so much as his own disquiet about where Joshua himself fit in. “Let’s not worry if I believe or not,” Marsh said. “If I can take Mister Framm’s stories, I can at least lissen to yours. Go on.”
Joshua smiled. “You’re a clever man, Abner. You should be able to figure things out by yourself.”
“I don’t feel so damn clever,” Marsh said. “Tell me.”
York sipped, shrugged. “They are my enemies. They are real, Abner, and they are here, all along your river. Through books like these, through research in newspapers, through much painstaking work, I have tracked them from the mountains of Eastern Europe, the forests of the Germans and Poles, the steppes of Russia. Here. To your Mississippi Valley, to the New World. I know them, I bring an end to them and all the things they have ever been.” He smiled. “Now do you comprehend my books, Abner? And the blood on my hands?”
Abner Marsh thought on that for a spell before he replied. He finally said, “I recollect how you wanted mirrors all up and down the grand saloon instead of oil paintings and such. For . . . protection?”
“Exactly. And silver. Did you ever know a steamer to wear so much silver?”
“No.”
“And, of course, we have the river. The old devil river. The Mississippi. Running water such as the world has never seen! The Fevre Dream is a sanctuary. I can hunt them, you see, but they cannot come near us.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t tell Toby to season everything with garlic,” Marsh said.
“I thought of it,” Joshua said. “But I dislike garlic.”
Marsh mulled it all over. “Just say I believe this,” he said. “I ain’t sayin’ that’s so, but just for the sake of argument I’ll go along. Still got some things that bother me. How come you didn’t tell me before?”
“If I’d told you at the Planters’ House, you’d never have let me buy into your company. I need the power to go where I must.”
“And how come you only go out by night?”
“They prowl by night. It is easier to find them when they go abroad than when they are safe in their sanctuaries, hidden. I know the ways of those I hunt. I keep their hours.”
“And those friends of yours? Simon and the rest?”
“Simon has been my associate for a long time. The others have joined me more recently. They know the truth, they assist me in my mission. As I hope you shall, henceforth.” Joshua chuckled. “Don’t worry, Abner, all of us are as mortal as you are.”
Marsh fingered his beard. “Let me have a drink,” he said. When York leaned forward, he added quickly, “No, not that stuff, Joshua. Something else. Got any whiskey?”
York rose and poured him a glass. Marsh drained it straightaway. “I can’t say I like any of this. Dead folks, blood drinkin’, all that stuff, I never believed in none of it.”
“Abner, this is a dangerous game I play. I never meant to involve you or your crew in any of it. I would never have told you as much as I have, but you insisted. If you wish to deal yourself out, I have no objections. Do as I tell you, run the Fevre Dream for me, that is all I ask. I will deal with them. Do you doubt my capacity to do so?”
Marsh looked at the easy way Joshua sat, remembered the force behind those gray eyes, the strength of his handshake. “No.”
“I have been honest in many of the things I’ve said to you,” Joshua continued. “My purpose is not my only obsession. I love this steamer as you do, Abner, and share many of your dreams for her. I want to pilot her, to know the river. I want to be on hand the day we outrun the Eclipse. Believe me when I say—”
There was a knock on the door.
Marsh was startled. Joshua York smiled and shrugged. “My friends from Natchez come up for their drink,” he explained. “A moment!” he called loudly. He said to Marsh in a low, urgent voice, “Think about all I have said, Abner. We can talk again, if you’d like. But keep my faith, and talk to no one about this. I have no wish to involve others.”
“You got my word,” Marsh said. “Hell, who’d believe it?”
Joshua smiled. “If you would be so kind as to let in my guests while I pour us some drinks,” he said.
r /> Marsh got up and opened the door. Outside a man and a woman stood talking in soft whispers. Beyond them, Marsh saw the moon standing between the chimneys like a glowing decoration. He heard snatches of a bawdy song from Natchez-under-the-hill, faint in the distance. “Come on in,” he said.
The strangers were a fine-looking couple, Marsh saw as they entered. The man was young, almost boyish, very lean and handsome, with black hair and fair skin and heavy, sensual lips. He had a fierce cold look in his black eyes when he glanced briefly at Marsh. And the woman . . . Abner Marsh looked at her, and found it hard to look away. She was a real beauty. Long hair black as midnight, skin as fine as milk-white silk, high cheekbones. Her waist was so small Marsh wanted to reach out and see if his big hands would go all the way around. He looked up at her face instead, and found her staring at him. Her eyes were incredible. Marsh had never seen eyes that color before; a deep, velvety purple, full of promise. He felt like he could drown in those eyes. They reminded him of a color he’d seen on the river, once or twice, at twilight, a strange violet stillness glimpsed only briefly, before darkness came in for good and all. Marsh stared into those eyes helplessly for what seemed like ages, until the woman finally gave him an enigmatic smile and turned briskly away.
Joshua had filled four glasses; for Marsh, a tumbler of whiskey, for himself and the others, his private stock. “I am pleased to have you here,” he said as he served the drinks. “I trust your accommodations are satisfactory?”
“Quite,” the man said, taking up his glass and looking at it dubiously. Remembering his own taste of the stuff, Marsh didn’t blame him one bit.
“You have a lovely steamboat, Captain York,” the woman said in a warm voice. “I shall enjoy taking passage on it.”