Garrick didn’t have time to acknowledge the saving blow. He hurled himself and his sword in the opposite direction, chopping another head clear.
Down in the trenches, Sebastian couldn’t swing his sword without hitting Timothy. He blasted the amputee below her jaw with his other pistol. A cloud of brain matter rained on the ravenous crowd.
She hissed her displeasure and fell forward, flashing rotted teeth beset on both sides by jutting fangs. Sebastian put his wrist to her throat to stop the teeth from advancing, dropping his gun and taking his blade out in time to push it against her neckline. He applied pressure until the sword disappeared into her hardened flesh like butter.
Her head came free and dropped clear. As quickly as her body collapsed, more hands were already grabbing and slicing him.
“They’re killing us,” a broken and hoarse voice protested.
Across the way, Sebastian caught the briefest glimpse of Ion Bey. He looked on from beside the door, but some of the crowd had turned their attention on him: those who preferred a meal that wouldn’t fight back.
Bey protested as claws came from the darkness and closed around his shoulders like spiders. The smug satisfaction on his face turned to instant terror as a pale face slipped from the obscurity of shadows, mouth agape and ready.
“There will be no one to protect you if you do this,” he screamed. “Kill them!”
Nevertheless, the vampire dropped her mouth and Sebastian could almost hear the spurt from here. As soon as the aroma of spilt blood hit the air, several of the vampires whirled their attentions back the way they’d come. The onslaught reduced.
Garrick remained overhead, hacking his blade back and forth as if he was clearing a path through overgrown fronds. Limbs spilled across the table while enemies poured in around them.
As weakened as these creatures were, there were too many of them.
The inflamed wall sconce lifted and then came free. Timothy had it in his arms like a spear. He charged the crowd, cutting a swath through now-flaming creatures.
Men and women burned around them.
Sebastian leapt for the table and stabbed down into the skull of an elderly man with one protruding fang. Timothy wielded the fire with a roar, sending the vampires scratching and clawing for the door.
“Don’t let them escape!” Garrick’s voice lorded over the commotion as he pulled the other sconce and lit it against Timothy’s.
The fire bounded off the burning villagers and climbed higher. In a moment, hot and fiery trails roared across the ceiling. Whatever was overhead was sure to come crashing down if they didn’t get out.
The creatures on the far side of the tavern charged, not with murder on their faces, but with fear in their eyes. Two of them had bloody chins, dragging a twitching and spurting Ion Bey behind them as they went for the door.
From the opposite side, Garrick was headed in the same direction.
The vampires reached it first and flung it wide. The feeders spilled into the streets of Rodica with Bey. Garrick severed their escape path by charging it with angry flame. The remaining creatures slipped instinctively into the corner.
“Get the ones who’ve escaped,” Garrick roared. Sebastian and Timothy hit the streets next, nearly tripping over Bey’s discarded body. They followed the two fleeing shadows into the forest beyond the wall.
The targets flailed, glancing over their shoulders in retreat. What blood they had siphoned out of Bey had increased their speed and agility. If Timothy hadn’t set the place aflame, these bastards would’ve had enough strength to charge through the commotion and kill them.
Sebastian pushed himself, determined to prove to his companions, or perhaps himself, that he wasn’t a dying old dog. He dove for the vampire’s legs and pushed them together. They toppled and Sebastian dropped on top of him while Timothy’s legs whizzed past in pursuit of the other.
Sebastian’s shoulder screamed out in agony before his throat could. The vampire’s mouth wiggled and Sebastian wasn’t concerned with finding out if it was to bite or to speak. He swatted it with his blade and took the head clean off. It rolled back down the hill toward Rodica.
He turned onto his back and gasped for air. His pain might’ve been dulled by waning adrenaline, but its return was a certainty. His chest was snug and his vision whitened.
The kid never knew when to quit, but Sebastian was too breathless to summon him back. There would be no finding the vampire by torchlight. Sebastian knew he should help, and wanted to, but his body was shutting down.
He attempted to call out, but his voice was a hollow echo.
His head flopped over and his cheek hit the ground. Through squinted eyes, he saw someone moving through the forest toward him.
Tulcea stepped into the path of the moon. Blonde hair covered her face as her lithe body squatted over him. He stared transfixed by the sex between her legs. How badly he wanted it. A terrifying thought, and one he couldn’t fight. He pursed his lips as her thighs hugged his cheeks, eager for the suckling juices that would cascade down his chin like a bite from a peach.
“Come with me, Sebastian,” she said. “There is nothing back there save for despair.”
He would’ve done anything to go. His mind wasn’t so far gone that he believed this to be right, however. He remembered the talons on her feet, even if they weren’t there now. Yet, somehow, she was also perfection, sliding down his body so that their faces touched. Her skin was translucent, and Sebastian saw the forest through her. Timothy jogged out of it, a severed head dangling in his hand as she faded and became nothing.
The kid dropped the trophy and skidded to his knees beside his friend as the witch vanished.
“Come on, up you go. Now.”
“Leave me,” Sebastian said. It would be easier to let go right here. Despite his mind’s betrayal, its insistence that he could somehow perform sexually while struggling to breathe and move, his body demanded rest. Probably an eternal amount of it. Tulcea would help him have it, and he was certain he was okay with that.
“Rubbish,” Timothy said and slapped his face. “Let’s go, old man. You’ve got to prove Garrick wrong, so move!”
He pulled Sebastian into a sitting position, careful of his injury. Against his hip, the frozen, open-mouthed vampire stared indifferently. There was eventuality in that gaze. A reminder that man and monster ended up the same, no matter how one lived their life. He brushed that dour realization off and tried to stand, asking what the hell Garrick was on about.
“That witch-finder’s opinion isn’t any damn good to me and you know that,” Timothy said as they wobbled toward the village.
Garrick stood outside the tavern, sweating against the collapsed building that continued to burn.
“Were you bit?” he asked to no one specific.
Timothy answered for both of them, but Garrick didn’t seem satisfied with the response. He eyed them carefully.
Sebastian sucked for air but managed to get very little of it. He blinked and found Tulcea, not the girlish creature that captured his sexuality, but the wrinkly hag who had bled puss. Her cadaver stench attacked, prompting a gag he couldn’t suppress. This weakness elicited a hysterical laugh from her. A torment no one else could hear.
Sebastian was transfixed by the parade of grotesquerie marching through his mind. Her flesh was purple, and her eyes drooped. Her chin wore strands of prickly silver fuzz. When her mouth popped, he saw just two teeth.
“What needs to be done?” he said. Anything to avoid her torment.
Before Garrick could respond, Timothy stepped between them. “How could you not realize we were waltzing into a trap? You, the great hunter, easily duped by desperate vampires.”
“Did you think anything wrong of Ion Bey? They were smart enough to keep a healthy envoy in place as their figurehead. Do you wish to berate me further, or shall we cleanse this village on our way out?”
“We’re not leaving yet,” Timothy said. “Not until Sebastian has had some rest.”
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Garrick nodded. “First, we do a building-to-building search. I am certain we’ll find stragglers here…ones so withdrawn from blood they’re too weak to walk.”
They divvied the homes and fanned out. Sebastian shambled though the few Rodican buildings he had energy enough to check, sifting through clothing and other personal belongings. He felt only despair in this. Family portraits, children’s drawings and toys—all of it useless junk now.
In the last house, he found an elderly creature crawling on broken hands out of a dirt mound in the basement. He circled the thing and watched its feeble, impotent advancement. Tired jaws snapped for his ankles, falling on mushy gums. A guttural noise passed its lips, suggesting long-held suffering by an unquenchable thirst.
The silver blade wound back and clipped down through its neck.
They regrouped at the inn and exchanged stories. All totaled, there hadn’t been more than four laggards.
“I found this,” Timothy said and tossed a ball of red cloth on the floor in between them.
A red cloak unfurled across the stone.
Sebastian’s heart lurched at the realization. Had Codrin and his followers intended to bring them here? When the three of them stood in that sun-laden field, having just repelled their vampiric captors, they stared at village rooftops in the far off distance and agreed that the vampires had planned on taking them there.
Now he realized that Codrin was likely steering them the long way around the mountain.
Around Tulcea.
Of all the dumb luck. All they had to do was keep going; an afternoon’s walk, and they could’ve been saved. Sebastian didn’t believe these sickly creatures had enough strength to overthrow two villages. Occupying Rodica made sense for them. It was shrouded almost entirely by forest—natural shielding from the sun. But the village that might have been their salvation?
“If only we had kept on the initial path…”
“We cannot know that,” Timothy said. “That village might have been every bit as gone.”
If Garrick dwelled on misspent opportunities, he managed to hide his regrets well. He revealed that he had found a coiled map of the area in his search. He loosened it on the table in the hall and placed a few candles over the curled paper to keep it straight. He tapped his finger on a crudely stenciled forest and then slid it to the right, over a large pool of blue.
“We are closer to Constanta than I expected,” he said. “No more than a few days away.”
No one wanted to stay in Rodica, least of all Sebastian. The city was close by and bed rest could wait. Timothy wouldn’t hear it, though, and Garrick advocated for a night’s sleep as well. As they figured out how to divide the evening into watch shifts, Sebastian protested.
“I cannot be the only one to see the danger, the stupidity, in this decision. We do not know how many more of those creatures are out there and we would be foolish to assume we got them all.”
“So desperate were these vampires that they let a human live among them. Why would they do this? To rope in daytime travelers, I suppose. They were starved, many immobile, and yet Ion Bey walked free, with little slits in his arms and thighs so he could feed them just enough for consciousness. They raised piked heads around the wall for…well, who can say? To claim what little blood remained this far east, while keeping stray vampires away in the process? You wouldn’t want others looking for blood when there’s none to go around. I don’t understand undead logic, but I cannot imagine there are more like them out there. Not close by, at least. They would be even worse off than our charred friends below.”
Sebastian gave his rented room a stranger’s eye. Looking at the feather bed set his heart racing with anxiety. He preferred the reality of cunning blood drinkers and scorned wolves to what waited atop that cradle of death. Tulcea was anxious to take him, and she would do it the next time he slept. That wasn’t paranoia or pessimism, but knowledge he simply had. The back of his eyes throbbed in time with her private laughter—echoing just for him.
Constanta was his best hope. Why could the others not see that? As soon as they secured passage to England, the hag bitch would leave him forever. He was sure of it.
He felt the familiar skirt of her smooth fingers on his softened stomach, delving beneath layers of frock and linen. Her smell returned, bringing a glut of delicious memories from that cave. Allure so powerful he floated to the bed like a magnet, unable to recall anything unpleasant there.
He pushed his arm against the wobbly dresser and turned back to the doorway. “We should march,” Sebastian said. “I know I don’t look like much, but I can make it.” His tone wouldn’t have convinced an acolyte.
“You have no choice but to get some sleep,” Garrick said. He rummaged through his satchel and fished a tiny phial of blue liquid from it. He came into the room and put it on the end table, urging Sebastian to sit and then lie back.
“You have to take that,” he said. “It’s important.”
Timothy popped his head in.
Sebastian knew that expression. It was one he’d seen only once in their years together.
Guilt.
When he awoke earlier this evening, Sebastian knew he hadn’t been delirious. The kid and Garrick had been discussing him in secret.
They know.
Before Sebastian could say anything, the hunter pointed at the phial.
“Drink it,” he said. “Now.”
“Why?”
“If you don’t, you’ll be dead by dawn.”
The Beyond
Garrick and Timothy stood at the foot of the bed. They wore tribunal faces and said nothing.
Sebastian didn’t protest. Not when Garrick had killed Ritter for being a potential liability and nothing more. Sebastian was that and worse. That he still lived in the hunter’s presence was a miracle.
“I'm afraid I knew what I was doing back there,” Sebastian said. “Her magic maybe prevented me from resisting, but I wanted her. I’ve always appreciated our fellowship, kid, but she made me realize just how lonely my nights have been. Trading sloshy words with other drunks. Those misspent evenings watching the sunrise through the bottom of a dirty whiskey glass. Friendship like that is no substitute for having an angel in your bed.”
“Stop speaking in past tense.” Timothy forced a smile. “You are not dying, old man. That bottle can save you.”
The kid’s optimism was as stubborn as the rest of him. It somehow remained unblotted by months of cruelty and death. A searing mark of character, if ever there was one.
That Timothy was a pain in the ass mattered not, because he had grown into a good man in the face of a hundred reasons to be anything but. Sebastian knew the kid had always possessed these qualities, and that the late Mrs. Hackett shouldered the responsibility for this. Still, he wanted to think he deserved a sliver of credit for steering him along the straight and narrow at a time when the angry orphan might’ve surrendered to his bloodiest instincts. This was as close as Sebastian would come to fatherhood, and so the thought offered great comfort.
Timothy Hackett was going to be all right, even if this new dawn was darker than any before it.
Sebastian turned his attention to the rolling liquid sloshing through the phial. The miniature glass was dainty, it could break between his forefinger and thumb. Still, its presence in his fist held sway. If this bright liquid could spell salvation, what in the hell was it?
He decided not to inquire.
“You look like you’re about to go tits up,” Garrick said. He tapped Sebastian’s ankles over the bed sheet. “Down the hatch.”
Sebastian twisted his mouth as he contemplated that order. The prospect of swallowing this liquid did not make sense.
“Pup,” the hunter said. “Check the streets for stragglers. I am sure you’ll find none, but once this begins we cannot be disturbed.”
The kid was reluctant to leave until Sebastian offered a nod of assurance.
Once his footsteps echoed directly beneath them on the way
out the front door, Garrick leaned in close. “How many times have you seen her since the mine?”
The right thing to do here was confess, but shame wouldn’t allow that. Sebastian felt guiltier than all the thieves he’d ever hunted. There remained in him a desire to have her no matter the cost. His thoughts were molded by her influence, but felt correct nevertheless. His heart pounded with the excited possibility of seeing her again, the forbidden aspect only heightening that desire. These were his thoughts and wishes, but Tulcea’s effect was like a drug that he could never quit.
Nor do I wish to.
He chose to keep his mouth shut because he couldn’t help himself. Seeing her meant that he wasn’t alone, and that was all the motivation he needed. Timothy would leave thief-taking behind as soon as they reached London, and Sebastian would become a solitary man at fifty, spinning tales to drunkards who were bound to forget every word in the morning light.
Sebastian had never wanted kids, trundling through youth with notions that an adventurous life was best. Now that he was beyond the other side of middle age, he cursed his rejections. His life ended at his last breath, and there would be no one to mourn him.
Except Tulcea.
“Are you seeing her now?” Garrick reached out and touched Sebastian’s shoulder. “I should’ve realized what she was the moment we stumbled into her lair.”
“I love her,” Sebastian said and clasped a hand over his mouth. That wasn’t true. Or was it?
“She attached herself to you…sucking your soul like a leech…it is the reason for your unrest.”
Sebastian closed his eyes and saw the edges of her face take shape within the vacuous nothing. Hot breath breezed across the bow of his nostrils, smelling of fresh rain.
“There is a way to come back from this, Sebastian,” Garrick said. “You only have to want it.”
Every syllable was more distant than the last. It was Tulcea’s voice he wanted to hear. Her lips he needed to suck.
“Christ,” Garrick reached for his shoulder and tugged until his eyes fell open. “If you want snatch, then take a girl for a roll in the hay once we reach Constanta. If this thing takes your body and soul, there’ll be nothing left of you in this life or the next.”
DEVIL’S ROW Page 13
