by P. N. Elrod
“So there, witch-pricker,” she said feet apart and hands on her bare hips. “Are you content now?”
Guffaws and hooting now, but Bainbridge wasn’t worried; he’d found what he needed. This smirking wench was headed straight for the flames. First she’d be given the opportunity to name others in her coven, and once that was out of the way then perhaps a jolly barrel roll to finish her off. Yes, pound a few knives between the staves so the sharp points are on the inside, shove her in, hammer the lid shut, then roll her merry-o down a nice, long hill, to burn barrel and all at the bottom. That was fine sport, never failed but to rouse up the young fellows of a town, to make trying them want more of the same, the shillings adding up for each witch that they found. . .
Percy cleared his throat. “Mr. Bainbridge? Does the girl bear the Devil’s mark?”
“She does, sir.”
“Indeed? Are you ready to prove that to the rest of us?”
From his doublet, Bainbridge drew out a small, elongated box. “In a trice, sir, in a very small trice.” He opened the box and plucked from it a slender silver object. “As everyone knows, witches cannot abide the touch of silver. Some squeal at the very sight of it.”
Gweneth gave no sign she was one of that number. “But it is also well known that the part of the body branded with the devil’s mark is wholly without feeling and may be deeply pierced without the witch giving the least cry of pain or bleeding so much as a single drop of blood.”
Those gentlemen not still distracted by Gweneth’s ample charms managed to nod sagely at this bit of information.
“You will see that when I pierce the Devil’s mark on the wench with this silver pin that she will neither give outcry nor will she bleed, providing unquestionable proof of her guilt.”
“Let us see the mark first.”
Gweneth, disdaining Bainbridge’s touch, stepped forward and pointed out a small red patch on her left forearm. “If this is what all the bother is about, then have a close look, sirs. It’s no devil’s sign, but merely a strawberry blemish I’ve had since birth. ’Tis likely you’ve seen such before on others if not on your own selves.”
“Do not try to deceive us with your foul master’s lies!” cried Bainbridge, clamping one huge hand hard around her arm. Startled, she struggled a moment, then held still, glaring defiance at him. His fingers pinched tightly on her flesh, hard enough to cut off all blood and all feeling. After a moment, when he judged her limb to be suitably numbed, he gently eased the silver pin into the spot.
Gweneth very unexpectedly said, “Ow!” and tore herself violently away. She gave Bainbridge a slap so resounding that it knocked his hat off, then pulled the pin from her arm and threw it on the floor. “You clod-pate bastard!” she snarled, trying to staunch the blood flow.
“It would seem,” said Percy, raising his voice to be heard over the robust amusement of his fellows, “that she is not a witch after all, sir.”
Bainbridge hadn’t quite recovered from the blow—his ears were still ringing—but he wasn’t about to give up yet. “She is a witch, and puts on a false show to trick you. ’Twas the silver pin that—”
“The false show I believe, sir, is what you are doing. You come into our town, get everyone all frothed up—which is very bad for the liver—about witch-hunting, repeatedly insist you won’t take money until you smell out a witch, but as soon as may be, you do manage to accuse someone: an obviously innocent woman.”
“Not innocent, I say! But mayhap you are bewitched by her, sir. She is a comely wench, after all.”
Percy made no reaction to this accusation. Odd. Usually when Bainbridge called that one out, the respectable element would go either huffy or fearful, vigorously deny everything, and hurry the proceedings along their normal path, meaning Bainbridge could get on with the business, take his earnings, and leave.
“Oh, bumfay and nonsense,” said Cameron impatiently. “Come, Percy, we’ll have to do something about him. Can’t hang about all night with this.”
“I suppose not,” Percy said with a sigh. “Well, Mr. Bainbridge, we of Little Evesham-on-the-Wash do judge that the accused, Gweneth Skye, is not a witch and may go free. Your services are no longer welcome here; you may leave as soon as you will.”
Bainbridge saw his fee slipping away faster than an oiled snake. “But you cannot make such a judgment!”
“Why not? It’s our town.”
“Aye, but there’re others who’ll not be so quick to deny the presence of the Devil in their midst. Word will get out of your laxness in seeking out and punishing heresy—”
“Perhaps it would be best for you to just—”
“If I have to go to the Witch-Finder General himself, I shall. There is evil in this place, and if you’re not going to purge it, then he will!”
“There’s no reasoning with his sort, Percy, and you know it,” said Cameron. “Things have gone too far already.”
Percy, rather mournful of countenance, looked at the others. “Are the rest of you in agreement?”
They all nodded, including, surprisingly, Gweneth. She’d not bothered to pull her chemise back on, but for all her base nakedness she didn’t look or act in the leastwise vulnerable or shamed.
“One last chance to forget about all this and be on your way, Mr. Bainbridge,” said Percy, in a tone of appeal.
“Oh, aye, but I’ll be going straight to the Witch-Finder Gen—”
“Yes, yes. Well, you can’t say I didn’t try.” He looked up to the men acting as guards by the door. “Call in the others.”
Bainbridge suddenly found himself close surrounded by several of the townspeople. Closest of all, to his shock, was Gweneth, who regarded him with a strange hot gleam in her remarkable eyes.
“I’ll go first if you please, Mr. Percy,” she said.
“Seeing what he did to your arm, it’s only fair.”
Bainbridge’s world went all soft as her gaze locked onto his. He heard her clear melodious voice speaking right into his mind, telling him all kinds of interesting things, strange things, imparting a feeling of absolute contentment and safety such as he’d never known in all his hard life. She opened the top of his doublet, undid the ties of the shirt beneath, pushed back the small collar. It was wanton, utterly improper, and in front of all these people terribly embarrassing, but he held still for her, so lost in her words of comfort that the presence of the others did not matter.
Then her sweet face went out of view as she leaned close. He felt a profound leap of pleasure in his privy parts as her mouth fastened on his throat. The people behind him held him fast, but he wasn’t about to move, not even when her long corner teeth began to grind away at his flesh. He groaned with delight as she broke his skin and started to suck.
“ ’Ow is ’e, Gwen?” someone inquired a few moments later.
“Tolerable,” she replied, lifting away. The whites of her eyes were gone, flushed blood-red now. “Likes his ale too well for me. Someone else want a turn?”
“Ale, eh? No, thank you, my girl. Used to love the stuff, but now. . .”
“I’ll have a try,” said Cameron, coming forward.
Gweneth stepped aside for him. To his shame and horror, Bainbridge again offered no struggle as that handsome young man now suckled at the wound she’d made. It was shameful to him because the bliss that seized him was just the same, just as intense, so much so that he soon altogether forgot himself and gave over to the joyance again, moaning.
One by one the others gathered around him had their turn until Bainbridge could no longer stand by himself, and with much kind consideration from his hosts, he was gently carried to the council table and stretched upon it. The room tilted—no, he was tilted. Two of them had lifted the end of the table by his feet. A feeble rush of blood went to his head.
“That’s better,” said Percy, after he’d finished taking his own drink. He did not appear to be quite so morose as before. Blinking hard, Bainbridge could just see them looking down at him like tooth
y, red-eyed angels at the Last Judgment and finally began to understand the true nature of his mistake.
“If this goes on much longer it’s going to get noticed,” Percy remarked to Cameron. “We’re going to get noticed.”
“Then perhaps we should do something about this Witch-Finder General person. He’s the one behind this mischief.”
“I agree with you, and I know we could. The question is should we?” Percy shook his head. “The last thing we want is to draw any sort of attention to ourselves.”
“It might be worth the risk. If he’s made to retire from the field, then perhaps this nonsense will stop, and things will settle down again.”
“I wouldn’t care to wager on that. You know how people are once they start killing.” There was an object in Percy’s hands now. It was a sturdy length of wood, charred and fashioned into a sharp point at one end. He idly turned it over and over, his mind obviously on other things. When he noticed Bainbridge staring at it, he whisked it from sight with an apologetic smile. “Best if we let things happen as they should in the rest of the world and just pay mind to our own matters.”
“You’re usually right about that, but,” Cameron gestured at Bainbridge, who was finding it hard to keep his eyes open, “this greedy clot’s our third one this year. I think we should make an exception about the Witch-Finder General, He stirs people up and in the wrong way.”
“Agreed, but we’ll have to be very careful about it if we do anything. Danger of discovery and all that, you know.”
“I know.” Cameron licked a stray blood drop from his very red lips. “But mind you, danger of discovery aside, they are such a tasty lot!”
* * *
Matthew Hopkins of England, the Witch-Finder General, as he liked to call himself, was directly responsible for the torture and deaths of hundreds of men and women in the years 1644-1646. He had many imitators who brought suffering and death to thousands more. There is a story he was finally discovered to be a witch himself when forced to submit to his own swimming test and floated before finally drowning. However, one of his associates recorded that he died untroubled of conscience in his bed in the summer of 1647 “after a long sickness of Consumption.” (Sic) Most scholars of folklore understand that the disease of consumption (tuberculosis) was often seen in past eras as evidence of a vampire preying upon the sufferer.
* * * * * * *
__________
YOU’LL CATCH YOUR DEATH
Author’s Note: This is the first Vampire Files short, sold to VAMPIRE DETECTIVES from DAW Books, edited by Martin H. Greenberg. Like many of the works in this new collection I’ve done a rewrite and polish on the original. No writer ever stops tinkering! It takes place a short time after book 5, FIRE IN THE BLOOD, and vampire PI Jack Fleming is in a dark, introspective mood. Nothing like a bit of homicide and assault to snap him out of it!
Chicago, February 1937
I met a terrified girl named Susan at three in the morning on a barren stretch of beach during an ice storm. The isolated location, late hour, and arctic agony blasting off Lake Michigan gave me the reasonable expectation of having the place to myself.
I’d was there to figure out how to live; she was there to die.
* * *
Black water roared against the shore, spray flying and merging with the sleet, stinging my face. Frozen sand cracked under my shoes as I walked. It was made to order for my bleak mood. I’d planned to do this last night, but delayed when the forecast of a storm came over the radio. The worse the weather, the better so far as I was concerned. A good dose of physical misery would shake me up, maybe help me shed the emotional pain.
Things had been rough for the last few nights. Not far from this spot I had killed, again, had come close to being killed, again, and in that damned lake, again. Each day’s dose of dreamless oblivion helped distance me from the bad memories, but only an inch at a time. The creeping pace felt like failure.
I’d been the same after the War. Getting shot at, losing friends in an instant when a bullet found them, seeing the influenza murdering more men than the bullets, and countless other horrors taught me all there was to know about cruelty, suffering, stupidity, and senseless death.
Since arriving in Chicago last August I’d wised up to the disturbing fact there’s always more where that came from.
In a remarkably brief time I’d been murdered, returned from a watery grave, and delivered payback with interest to my killers. In the months to follow I’d been subjected to and committed even worse crimes. I’d learned that when someone pushed me I could and would push back ten times harder. Literally. A few never got up again.
Like the man who’d had gone into that freezing black lake, never to return. I’d done that.
It didn’t bother me as much as I thought it should.
Apparently a chunk of ice had formed in my soul sometime when I’d not been looking. It had nothing to do with my being a vampire. If I thought that to be true then it was time to give up and find some way of bumping myself off. This inner chill was wholly human—and scary.
I could not ignore it: I was glad to still be walking around and just might be able to live with the fact that yet another man was dead at my hands. I’d done the world a service with that death. He could stay at the bottom forever with the rest of the slime and good riddance.
I wanted to not know such things about myself, but too late, I was stuck with it.
Now what?
When I’d come back from the War it had been simple: find enough work to support getting a few years of college into my head, get a real job, meet a nice girl. That had worked at the time. I was with other young men in the same situation. We told our stories, mourned our dead, and got drunk. The camaraderie kept most of the nightmares at bay.
I didn’t have that now. Yes, I had friends ready to help, but they didn’t know what I was going through, not really. It’s a hell of a change to wake up dead: no need to breathe except to talk, no heart thumping stolidly away, trapped in a dead body while the sun made its round.
And overshadowing it all was the exquisite physical joy of drinking blood. Not even those closest to me could fully understand that one. Hell, even I found it hard to accept, and I’d had months to get used to it.
As far as I knew, I was the only vampire in Chicago. We’re a rare breed. I kept an eye out for others who might also haunt the Stockyards to feed, but without luck. They were either better at keeping their heads down or didn’t exist.
You’re on your own, Mr. Jack Fleming of Chicago.
Strangely, I found that to be more annoying than intimidating. If I could get knocked flat and come back pissed as hell and swinging, then there was hope. That part was also wholly human, a part I could respect.
Maybe you shouldn’t think too hard about this crap.
True. It didn’t make me feel better.
It’s not like I’d wanted to kill anyone. If—God forbid—I ever got to that point. . .no. Human or vampire, that just wasn’t going to happen to me.
Of course I knew better. You just can’t anticipate what bad choices lie in the future, but for the present, this would keep me from putting a wooden bullet in my head.
Turning into the slicing wind, I was now able to savor the solitude and the noisy black water. That restless lake was my vast and ignorant ally, enemy, murderer, and midwife, and a great keeper of secrets. It was comfortable with mine.
I’d come to confront demons, hoping a stormy walk where they’d been born would shake them loose, and it had worked. Perhaps some shred of crippling guilt might sneak up on me later, but not tonight.
Drinking a lungful of damp air sharp enough to cut iron, I held it until the edge was gone. Releasing, the wind whisked it from my lips into the endless sky to grow clean and cold once more. I could do the same, spreading my arms, fading from the world until the wind swept my invisible and formless self away.
In this gale I’d soar up the low bluff to the road like a lost balloon and blunder in
to my car parked on the shoulder. That would send me solid fast enough. Nuts to that. And nuts to standing out here courting frostbite. The harsh weather and lonely location had worked. I’d needed something bigger and stronger than myself to put my life and hard times in perspective. I was going to be all right…or close to it.
Time to head home.
I glanced up and down the wide stretch of beach a last time as though crossing a street. It didn’t seem so bleak now. The high restless clouds reflected back pale glow from the city, not that I needed much to see well at night. My changed condition had its compensations, otherwise I’d have missed the figure struggling along the shoreline from the north.
Fisherman? Not at three in the morning in this weather. Fresh air fiend out for a walk? What a crackpot.
Yeah. I know. I should talk.
The distant figure hobbled closer: a woman, on the small side, looking done in as she stumbled over the uneven sand. She wore a simple dark dress and shoes and nothing more. No coat, hat, or gloves. She was hunched forward, arms folded tight to hoard what warmth remained in her slight body.
A dame alone on a beach in this murderous cold—of course something was wrong. Whatever problems I thought I had, hers were worse. I moved toward her.
“Hey, lady, can I help?”
She didn’t hear. Distance, roaring wind, and water masked my voice.
Stepping up my pace, I yelled again. She stopped, swaying a little, and looked behind her. The wild wind grabbed her brown hair as she turned, creating a vertical part along the back of her unprotected head.
“Over here,” I shouted, waving, moving closer.
She snapped around, clawing hair from her eyes, and stiffened when she caught sight of me. I glimpsed a young face burned white by the cold. Terror and torment flashed in those wide eyes, then she whirled to her right, away from the lake, toward the road, and tried to run. She didn’t get far; the sand slowed her too much. I caught up easily, but kept a couple yards between us so as not to scare her more than necessary.
