Apparently not.
“How do you think you’re going to go about this?” Ash asked. “You…what? Kill us? Then what happens? You think you’re going to take down the Revolutionaries? You think the town will fall in line behind you all, and that you’ll have the power you’ve hungered for while hiding in your master’s shadow for all these years?”
Greeb’s smile faded. He drew his sword and examined the tip nonchalantly. “Maybe. Maybe not. To be honest, I’ve not thought past this part. But, then again, this has always been my favorite part of the plan. And, since your bitch-tits leader is out exploring the wilds with the fanged bitch, why not take a chance when we get it? Right, boys?”
Nodding and grunts of agreement all around emphasized the danger they were in. Ash did his best to look for a way to escape but could see none. He heard Alice whisper behind him, “We can take them,” but he wasn’t so sure. He was a good fighter—one of the best in the guards’ cohort—and he knew that Alice was skilled beyond comparison with twin blades. But two against eight? That left something to be desired.
“Let’s see how your Residuaries react when we hand over your corpse,” Greeb said, raising his sword and coming for Ash. “Sic ’em, boys.”
They moved quickly, coming at them from all angles. Instinctively, Ash and Alice moved so they were back to back. In a movement so fast it could have been missed by anyone caught unawares, their weapons were in their hands as they grunted and huffed with defensive parries.
Ash blocked a two-by-four with nails sticking out the end, cutting it clean in half with his sword—a piece of craftsmanship Mary-Anne had given the Revolutionaries from the old world. The blade made all their attackers’ weapons pale in comparison. He followed through the chop, bashing his head into the man’s skull. There was an audible crack, and the man fell on his ass.
“Humpty Dumpty had a great fall—” Ash mocked, stopping quickly as a blade darted for his face. He twisted his face away just in time to duck—luckily, Alice was a foot shorter than himself—and hooked his foot around the guard’s ankle. Off-balance from his strike, he was swept to the floor, landing clumsily on top of the thug still rubbing his forehead.
Alice, meanwhile, roared as she used Ash’s back to lift herself off the ground and booted the man with slick-backed hair with both feet. He grunted as the air was knocked out of him, then came back for another attempt. She sliced at him, now, launching toward her left, and caught his throat. His face melted from enthusiasm to horror in a millisecond, his fingers clutched at his neck in a useless attempt to stem the blood that stained them.
“Stupid bitch,” he croaked, unable to stem the flow, and fell to the floor.
Somewhere out of sight, they heard Greeb cry in anger.
“What’s the matter with you? Get them, you shit-eating-assholes!”
“If you’re going to eat shit, the asshole is the best place to go,” Ash muttered between blocks and attacks. Somewhere nearby, he heard a door open and close. “How you holding up, babycakes?”
“Really?” Alice replied between breaths. “Pet names, at a time like this?”
“If we’re to die, I’d have at least liked to have given it a go.”
Alice blocked old slick-back but took a mean right hook to her jaw. Her face half-turned toward Ash. “Well, don’t,” she said, turned back, and drove a dagger up into the underside of Slick-back’s jaw. She saw the metal cut through the skin, driving through his tongue and tickling the roof of his mouth where the tip of the blade stopped. “Or at least find something better than babycakes, okay?”
“Deal,” Ash replied.
Alice watched slick-back as comprehension dawned. A moment later, he ran from the fray, disappearing around the corner with a muffled cry.
She had no time to cheer as two more men came at her. Both she and Ash fought well, taking the occasional nick and managing to keep them at bay. It wasn’t until Ash took a fist to the stomach—narrowly avoiding a blade driving into his hip—that he saw Greeb watching from a safe distance. Only, now, he held a bow and arrow.
Whether he had hidden it in the alley and grabbed it while the two of them had been distracted, Ash had no idea. But there it was. Greeb’s one eye closed as the other trained down the line of sight, directly at his face.
He could see the assassin release a deep breath. Ash reached behind him with one hand and pulled Alice down, but not before he heard the arrow whistling through the air.
He closed his eyes, waiting for the lightning bolt of pain to take them both. It did not come. What he did hear was the grunt of a body falling to the floor beside him, and the gurgled grunts of choking.
Alice…no. Please! his mind protested. But when he opened his eyes, he was looking into the vacant, glassy stares of a guard lying dead next to him.
“Ash! Look!” Alice urged from behind.
Lying dead on the floor with an arrow protruding from his chest, lay Greeb. His eyes were closed, and a growing pool of blood collected beneath his body. Chatters of confusion and disbelief sounded around them as a face Ash and Alice recognized moved into view.
“Take another step towards them and you’re next,” Laurie said, shaking her long blonde hair behind her. She held another arrow knocked in her bow, ready to fire. When one of the guards shouted, “Fuck this!” and dove at Alice, she loosed the arrow to find its mark deep in the guard’s skull, dropping him to the ground.
“Who’s next?” she said. “Drop your weapons if you want to live.”
The remaining guards did so, some a little more quickly than others. Laurie approached Ash and Alice with her weapon still drawn and handed them a coil of rope. They hurried to bind the guards until they all sat back-to-back, their eyes doing everything possible to avoid Greeb’s bleeding corpse some ten feet away.
“Thanks,” Ash said once the guards were secure. He flushed red, trying his best not to look at Laurie directly, conscious of Alice’s eyes on him, too.
There was an awkward silence before Alice said, “Yeah, thanks. You really saved our asses back there.”
“It’s the least I could do. You saved mine and my kin by letting us stay here. I couldn’t give enough thanks for that. Hopefully, this will go some way to repaying that debt.”
Alice looked around at the street which stood empty aside from themselves and the guards. “What were you doing down here?”
Ash saw a dark suspicion cross her face and, for a second, he wondered the same thing. Had she been following them?
“Visiting a friend,” Laurie replied, not meeting their eyes. “I’d heard they had come through the gates, also. I wanted to see how they were faring.”
Taking a breath, Ash looked directly at Laurie. She truly was beautiful. Her eyes reminded Ash of summer skies, and her hair flowed like a golden waterfall. His feelings, of course, were with Alice. But still…
“Your friend. What’s their name?”
A shadow crossed Laurie’s face. “He didn’t come to your investigatory meeting, huh?”
They both shook their heads.
“Can you take us to him?” Ash asked. He almost jumped when he felt someone beside him. A moment later, he realized it was Alice, and the tension left him. They wiped their blades on the hems of their clothing and put their weapons away. Alice’s hand found his.
Laurie looked down at their hands, then back to their eyes as if studying them. “Very well,” she said at last. “Though I’m going to warn you, it isn’t pretty.”
Chapter Eleven
Silver Creek, Silver Creek Forest, Old Ontario
Laurie wasn’t kidding. It wasn’t pretty at all.
The curtains were partly drawn, leaving thin strips of dying light to illuminate the room. Laurie had led them through a house which made Alice think more of a hovel than anywhere a person would live. A pile of blankets had been gathered in the corner of the room, bundled and grimy. From within this pile came a series of coughs.
Laurie had pulled back a blanket to reveal a
head. Chester—the man they were hoping to find. Only they had hoped they wouldn’t find him like this.
“Is it bad, Doc? Is it terrrrrible?” Chester croaked, his words barely more than a whisper.
“These aren’t doctors,” Laurie replied, a shimmer in her eyes as she took a step back and looked at the specimen before them, her eyes soft with pity.
Chester’s condition was appalling. His fiery red hair looked greasy and clumps stuck out at all angles, except for those places where there was no hair at all. Patches of bald skin looked as though he must’ve yanked out fistfuls of his own hair at some point. His skin was a mix of weeping sores and red patches as if blood had boiled to the surface and stopped. His eye twitched as he spoke, and occasionally, his hands would jerk out at them before a mask of surprise grew on his face and he tucked them into the crook of his arms.
“C’mon, Doc. Just give it to me straight,” Chester begged.
Alice moved closer to Ash. “How long do you think he has?” Her whisper emerged as barely a sound.
Ash stepped up beside Chester and went down to one knee. “It’s not good,” he said flatly.
A strange yelp escaped the patient’s mouth. He put a fist to his lips and bit into the skin, seemingly unaware of the pain as droplets of blood broke through the flesh.
“Listen, I will try to help you,” Ash continued. “But first, I need you to answer a few questions for me, okay?”
Chester hesitated, then nodded.
“Have you put anyone else at risk, anyone at all? Hugged, kissed, bitten, spread the sores to anyone you might know of?”
Chester shook his head. “No. It’s just been me. I was scared of what it might do to people if I let them too close.”
“When you arrived at Silver Creek, who did you arrive with?”
Chester told them he had arrived alone. His two companions had been attacked in the forest, and he had managed to escape—but not before receiving what he thought to be a minor scratch. His face grew shameful, perhaps at the memory of leaving his friends behind.
“What do we do?” Laurie asked.
“There’s only one cure for the Madness,” Ash said.
He moved so fast that Laurie’s protestations only came after Chester’s throat was sliced and the blankets turned dark from his blood. She folded to her knees, tears running unchecked. Though it was an inevitable decision, Ash understood the emotion that came from losing someone close.
He stood up, torn between hugging Laurie or leaving her to grieve. She was beautiful even when she cried. He felt Alice at his side and looked down into her eyes.
She looked sad. Though, if he wasn’t mistaken, there was a slight hint of something else there. A satisfaction that it had been Ash who had had to play the bad guy in front of Laurie.
“Come. We’ll need to relay this to the CoR,” Ash said, looking at Laurie now. “Maybe on the way, you can explain more about where the fuck you learned to shoot like that.”
Ashdale Pond, Old Ontario
Caitlin’s dreams were filled with fire. Of wood and smoke and flame. She saw Silver Creek alight in a wash of orange and yellow, wooden structures fodder to hungry flames that surged with every breath of the wind.
Everywhere she looked, people ran. Grime and ash clung to tears. Somewhere amidst it all, he came—her own version of the man she had yet to see, Pastor Andrews. Walking slowly through the chaos with the steady grace of a doe, his face wore a mask of pleasure and delight.
Caitlin ran at him, but as she struck him down, he fizzled into nothingness, disappearing with the smoke.
“Coward!” she roared above the crackles of the flames.
And there, above it all, sounded a deep, steady chuckle she recognized immediately. Governor Halrod Trisk. The Firestarter. The twisted Firestarter.
A series of bangs shook Caitlin from her dream. She sat up, her face clammy with sweat. Kain was already alert, fully dressed and his weapon drawn. Outside, all was dark, yet a faint smell of smoke still lingered in the air.
Kain placed a finger to his lips and creaked the door open. Caitlin could hear someone walking down the stairs—Jamie, judging by his pace. A moment later, her thoughts were confirmed as he spoke.
“All right, all right. I’m coming,” he moaned. “Hold your horses.”
Another aggressive burst of knocks sounded before they heard the door open, and Yusuf’s voice rang deep and clear. “It’s time. Get your shit. Grab your Nana. No excuses.”
Jamie’s voice carried up the stairs. “Nana. Time for communion.”
“Tell them I’m at work. These spuds aren’t going to plow themselves,” Mabel’s croaked reply came.
“Nana, I—”
“Not just her, Jay-Jay,” Yusuf admonished in hard tones. There was malice in his voice as if he had said those words before but now had the conviction to follow through.
“I’ve told Pastor Andrews before, the crops need attention. Someone’s got to stay up while the town sleeps—”
“No. More. Excuses, fuck-face,” Yusuf said. Caitlin could hear the glee in his voice. “Governor’s orders.”
There was a pause. Jamie stumbled over his words. “Christy…please…you must surely understand?”
Another pause dragged out a long silence before Christy repeated, “Governor’s orders, Jay.”
“Good, then it’s settled.” Yusuf clapped. “Now, get your geriatric side-bitch downstairs and let’s be on our way. Plenty more folks to drag from their safe little cocoons before the service starts.”
“You mean—” Jamie said.
“You think you’re the only resistant twat we need to lug out? Come on, Jay-Jay, you’re better than that.”
Kain’s face creased as he snarled. He looked ready to run out and mow them both down until Caitlin caught his wrist and shook her head.
“Wait,” she mouthed.
Caitlin peeked around the door, certain she could still hear Mabel in her room down the hall. As the old girl came out of her room, she caught Caitlin’s gaze and, for the first time since Caitlin had arrived at the house, something like recognition flashed across them.
An icy shiver ran down Caitlin’s spine as she began to panic, wondering if Mabel would rat them both out. “You’ve forgotten these ones, too. We’ve got two stowaways up here who the governor would probably love to meet. Now, carry my bags for me, dear, because my back can’t take much more.”
But that’s not what happened.
Mabel brought a shaking finger to her lips, then half-turned to point at the room behind her, still closed from when they passed the door on their way to bed.
“What?” Caitlin mouthed.
Mabel didn’t reply, but she gestured with two fingers pointing downwards from each corner of her mouth, like a child attempting to pretend they had fangs A strange gesture, really.
“Nana, come on,” Jamie called again, all strength faded from his voice.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Mabel said, winking at Caitlin before heading down the stairs. “Try to stop me. That Pastor Andrews is quite the looker. Strange that he only comes out at night, though. If I didn’t know better”—Mabel raised her voice so that Kain and Caitlin could hear her without even trying—“I’d say he was a vampire.”
Mabel shrieked with laughter. Yusuf said something which Caitlin assumed had been derogatory, but she didn’t hear the words. The door closed behind them, and Mabel’s cackles faded down the street a moment later.
“What in the name of Sam Hill was all that about?” Kain asked, putting his sword back. “That bitch really does have a screw loose, huh?”
Caitlin shook her head. “Not this time, Kain. There was something there. Something in her eyes which changed, as though she was seeing properly for the first time.”
“And jabbering about potatoes? Yeah…because that’s real normal.”
Caitlin told Kain that she had seen Mabel make a visible pretense of fangs, no accident given the mention of the vampire before she le
ft. “You don’t think she’s seen Mary-Anne, do you?”
“Oh yes, definitely. And pixies, and trolls, and goblins, dwarves, and dragons.” Kain whirled a finger next to his temple. “That bitch has seen everything.”
“C’mon, pooch. Get real,” Caitlin snapped.
Kain turned to Jaxon who had been snoozing for most of the encounter. He raised his head, whined, then lowered it again. “You hear that, Jax? Kitty Cat hates it when you fantasize.”
“Kain,” Caitlin growled.
“Fine. Maybe she has seen Ma. But what are we going to do about it here and now? The plan is to follow them, right? Sneak up to the church and check out what’s going down? Y’know, the exact same shit that Ma was supposed to do before she—oh…what happened again? Oh, that’s right. Before she disappeared?”
The creaking of a door opening punctuated his sarcasm. Caitlin stared intensely at Kain, wrestling with her response to his scorn.
Jaxon stood up lazily, shook off his sleep, slipped between their legs, and headed out of the room. Caitlin ignored him and focused instead on how to proceed. They needed a plan that went beyond simply trying their luck.
“We’ll find her,” Caitlin said as the only answer to Kain’s sarcasm. “I’m sure we will.” She didn’t say what she was truly thinking at that moment. If we don’t, we’re more fucked than a greased-up whore left to sleep naked in Wendy’s Tavern.
“Come. Get your shit together,” Caitlin said. “Let’s go find them.”
It was as they were set to leave the room that she realized Jaxon had not returned. “Jax?” Kain called, having obviously noticed the dog’s absence as well.
“Where’s he gone?”
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t have called for him, would I?”
“Jaaaaax?” Caitlin said, clicking side-mouthed to call Jaxon back. But she needn’t have bothered. As she stepped out into the landing, she saw Jaxon lying on his back on the floor as Mary-Anne scratched his belly.
“I wondered how long it would take you to realize,” Mary-Anne said, a grin on her face. “And you, Kain. How bad must your sense be if you couldn’t detect a vampire napping in the spare room?”
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