As the wolfish pirates ran, they all glanced back at Callie every few moments, nervous about having silver at their backs.
"Polar bears?" Sabine said, running close beside Jack, her eyes still alight with the tiny crackle of lightning that danced inside them. "Those things aren't ordinary bears. The malice that burns in them — "
"Vampires," Jack said, glancing at her. "They can masquerade as animals."
"Like the werewolves," Sabine said.
"Nothin' like the werewolves," Callie put in, keeping stride with them, even as the wolves raced ahead. "These boys you keep company with, they ain't people anymore. They're beasts. Hungry, yeah. Wild. But vampires are somethin' else . . . They're evil, pure and simple. Anything pure'll hurt 'em — the sun, silver, even faith — 'cause all they got inside 'em is darkness and hurt. If there's a Devil, you better believe he put a little piece of Hell in each and every one of these things."
Jack said nothing. The time for words had passed. He let his heart match the rhythm of his boots on the earth, steadied his breathing, all the while watching the water and the trees and wondering where the next attack would come from. Ahead, he saw Vukovich crouch and drop into a long, loping run, half-man and half-wolf. The pirate was on the verge of fully shedding his humanity, perhaps thinking it would make him more effective in a fight. Jack wasn't sure about that. Guns and knives might not do much damage to a vampire without a silver component, but they'd slow an attack at least.
"There!" the Reverend called, pointing into the pines on the left.
A glimpse of white fur revealed itself in a gap amidst the trees, but it was gone in a blink. There had been a great deal of crashing about before, but now the two hellish things in the woods managed to move almost soundlessly, the only noise of their passing the whisper of a wind gust. A sick feeling continued to spread through Jack, a nauseating chill that coiled inside him like poison, and he wondered if this was what it felt like to be in the presence of real evil. He'd encountered madness and the supernatural before, but nothing like this.
Something splashed in the river and he twisted that way, but saw nothing.
"Toying with us again," Sabine said.
"Playing with their food," Callie muttered. "Giving yer boys a taste of their own medicine, I guess."
Of the four pirates racing ahead of them, Louis was the straggler, and he overhead Callie's comment. He snarled, revealing gleaming fangs as he turned to shoot her a withering look. His golden tooth shone in the moonlight.
"My patience with this game wears thin," he called back. "There are three of them and seven of us. The time for running is done."
"We run as long as these fellas give us room," Callie replied. She'd holstered her guns again to make running easier, and they shifted heavily with every stride. "Trust me, doggy. You don't fight these things unless you have to."
"Doggy?" Louis snapped. "Who are you calling — "
"Shut up, Louis," Jack said through gritted teeth. "Watch the trees."
He gave Jack a dark look. Even back on board the Larsen, when Jack was a prisoner, they had shared a certain amiable connection, an alliance. But no matter how rational Louis seemed, Jack had to remember he was not rational at all. His human face was only a façade. Jack might teach them to appreciate their human nature and to control their savagery, but the savagery would never be scoured from them. If he forgot that vital fact, he knew it would be at his peril. Right now, though, his only concern was keeping them all alive, and that meant staying on guard.
They kept running, expecting an attack at any moment. Trees whipped at their faces. Maurilio stumbled into the shallow edge of the river and leaped back out as if burned. Jack could sense the darkness pacing them in the woods, and Sabine confirmed the one in the water remained, churning upriver through deep water. Jack caught glimpses of white through the pines and that poisonous taint he felt in his heart seemed to sicken him further. He felt unclean. Scrubbing his skin would not be enough to remove the taint of the monsters.
"It's like they're herding us," Sabine whispered, her breath rasping with the effort of running.
Jack hadn't thought of it that way, and the idea blossomed into terror in his mind. He'd been thinking the same as Callie, that they were being toyed with. The vampires must know that Louis and the others were werewolves, or at least knew they were inhuman, and they were enjoying this torment — making the predators run in fear. What if Sabine was right? What if the devils were herding them? The question became . . . to what? Were there more of them ahead, lying in wait? Did a massacre await them further upriver?
"Callie," Jack said, huffing with effort, catching glimpses of white in the pines. "This is foolish. They'll just let us run all night and wait until we're too exhausted to go on. There's no way we make it to sunrise without having to fight."
The woman stopped running, and they all took a breath. She hocked something up from the depths of her throat and spat into the water, and when she spoke she did not look up at Jack. "I reckon you're right."
"Better to fight while we can still walk," Sabine said.
Callie snapped around to glare at her. "Didn't I just say that? I ain't stupid, missy. I was just hopin' a better option would come along."
"The cavalry's not coming, Callie," Jack said quietly.
The hunter sighed and drew her guns again. "Fine. It's pretty enough here by the river. Good a place as any to die."
Chapter Six - The Stand
The pause, the peace, seemed endless. Even the sound of the river receded for a while, and Jack thought that the land was holding its breath. Perhaps when these monsters were close, it always did.
He glanced at Sabine standing close beside him. She seemed more settled than she'd been since leaving the stranded steamer. The calm before the storm, he thought, and her eyes sparkled with the wild.
Beside her, Callie stood stern and determined, guns held down at her hips. She was breathing deeply, slowly, and if she felt fear, she did not show it. Jack had a sudden, piercing need to know her story, because perhaps somewhere and sometime it crossed his own. Then the attack came, and he had only an instant to hope he would soon be able to ask.
One of the beasts burst from the trees, strangely silent. The polar bear's mouth was open, visage as fierce and furious as any Jack had ever seen, but it did not growl or roar, and somehow its silence was more awful. More filled with a serious purpose. Its teeth glimmered in the moonlight. Its long, long teeth . . . .
Vukovich surged forward to meet the huge bear, and just as they struck face to face, Louis hit it from the side. Limbs lashed and slashed, bodies rolled, and at last there was noise as something roared in pain.
Callie raised her revolvers.
Silver bullets, Jack remembered. With Vukovich in the line of fire.
"No!" Jack said, and then they all heard the surge of water as another bear burst from the river. Jack turned in time to see the beast rise from the flowing waters like a nightmare carved from ice, fall upon Maurilio, and sink its impossibly long claws into his chest and throat. It pulled him back into the river, biting into his face as it went. It swallowed Maurilio's scream, and blood sprayed black in the moonlight.
Sabine groaned and went to her knees. Lightning thrashed. It arced across the sky above them in a sheet, but it must have struck the ground somewhere far away, if at all.
The Reverend was already splashing into the water after Maurilio. He was fully changed now, his wolfish shape bounding so quickly that he almost seemed to leap across the currents, colliding with the bear's shoulder and driving it onto its side.
Maurilio was still clasped in its mouth, but it freed its claws from his flesh to lash out at the Reverend. He was faster than the bear — this time, at least — and he swung up and around onto its back, opening his extended jaws sickeningly wide before plunging his face into the back of the bear's neck, gnawing, biting, shaking his head to tear skin and flesh.
Callie took three steps toward the river and raised her
guns. The first shot went wide, and then Jack was behind her, knocking her aside and kicking at her wrists. One gun spun from her grasp and struck the ground.
"No!" he shouted. "You'll hit them!"
Callie turned on him, but she seemed calm and composed instead of angry. That's just what she intended, Jack thought. He barged into her, knocking her over and bending to pick up her dropped gun at the same time.
"Maurilio," Sabine breathed, and Jack looked up.
The Reverend was still clasped to the bear's back, slashing and biting at the creature that was at least six times his size and weight. Part of Maurilio was still jammed between the bear's jaws. But only part. His headless body had been flung aside and now lay across a rock protruding from the river, water crashing against it and foaming dark with blood.
In the polar bear's jaws, Maurilio grimaced his last.
Jack raised the gun, shouting, "Reverend!"
The Reverend did not even look up. He kicked himself away from the bear and landed in the water, and as the beast leapt after him Jack fired three times in quick succession.
Beside him, Callie had knelt and opened fire as well.
Several dark spots appeared across the Polar bear's shoulder and the side of its head, and it slumped forward into the surging waters, sinking out of view before surfacing again to be carried away with the flow. Jack could not see whether it still carried any part of Maurilio in its grotesque jaws. He's gone, Jack thought, and he was surprised to feel a pang of grief. Maurilio had been a monster, true, but one that was struggling to find his humanity. In death, perhaps all were equal.
The bear floated away in the grip of the river. With it went a stink that polluted Jack's thoughts, and a blight on the natural wilderness that made this place so challenging and so beautiful.
But it was not the only one.
"Two down!" Callie said. She sounded almost exuberant as she stood and hurried past Jack and Sabine, heading toward where Louis and Vukovich were fighting the other bear. She left Jack with the revolver, and he tried to remember whether it was the one she'd managed to fire from before he had knocked her aside. He might have three shots left, but he should only rely on two.
"One more still in the trees," Sabine said.
"Yes. Can you . . . ?" He did not finish, because already the breeze was whipping around her, and the light of elemental powers danced in her eyes. After a moment she frowned, and shook her head as a bolt of lightning struck somewhere distant from them.
"It's not easy," she said. Jack grasped her hand.
"It doesn't matter. Come on." He followed Callie toward the fight just as the Reverend emerged from the river, dripping blood and water and grinning a many-toothed grin as he pounced across the ground and leapt at the struggling polar bear. He clamped onto one massive front leg and bit, shaking his head again as he tried to cripple the creature.
Jack watched the tree line ahead of them, and behind, and also the river in case the fourth bear had circled them and was ready to attack from the water.
"Jack, there's something else," Sabine said.
"What?"
She nodded toward the trees. "Another fight."
Perhaps some of them have survived, Jack thought, and he wished Tim Underwood well.
The polar bear before them — the vampire polar bear, impossible yet horrifically real — seemed to have met its match in the three werewolves. It was far from beaten, but the brutal combat was fast, vicious, and bestowing injuries on both sides. The bear's hide was open in several places, dark and glimmering in the moonlight. Vukovich, the Reverend and Louis harried it whilst shrugging off their own injuries. Louis had been gored to the bone across his left shoulder, and Vukovich nursed a tattered right hand. Though the bear stomped and kicked, the Reverend held onto the beast's leg with his teeth and claws, digging deep with both to reach the ligaments and nerves whose slicing would render the limb useless.
Callie ducked left and right, looking for a clear shot. Because while the fight might be matched, none of the wolves could deliver the coup de grace. Jack was glad to see that this time, Callie was more aware of not hitting them. He wondered whether she was simply conscious of the number of bullets she had left.
She's got more in those pouches, surely? Now was not the time to ask.
If he called off the wolves in order to get Callie a clear shot, the last one in the bear's reach might be gored and crushed, killed.
"Sabine, can you confuse it?" Jack asked. Back at sea, during their escape from the Larsen and the battle aboard Death's ship, Sabine has touched on the minds of wolves to confuse or distract them. Now Jack asked her to do the same to a vampire.
She turned to him, face drawn, eyes wide and dark. He had sensed those soulless things out there, as well as her. Jack could understand how terrible it might be to touch their minds, rather than simply seek them out. He almost withdrew his question.
But Sabine only held his hand tighter and closed her eyes, and moments later the polar bear paused in its assault and looked skyward. Its blood-soaked mouth opened in a furious roar, and Vukovich took the opportunity to slash his unnatural claws across its throat.
Blood sprayed, darkening the ground.
The bear looked at Vukovich. Furious. Monstrous. The light dimmed in Vukovich's eyes as he realized he was next.
Callie fired, and her bullet shattered one of the bear's six-inch teeth and ricocheted into the night.
The bear's head snapped to the side, and the Reverend fell away from its leg, kicking himself backward from whatever he had sensed of the hot silver bullet.
Sabine slumped to the ground and vomited, and Jack knelt with her, still holding her hand while he brought up his gun on the other hand. But good shot though he was, Louis was still clasped to the rolling, biting, roaring bear, and the Reverend and Vukovich quickly rejoined the fray.
"Damn!" Jack shouted, frustrated and terrified at how this would end. Already Maurilio was gone, torn apart and left to the watery wild. The others were hurt. Perhaps a wound dealt by another unnatural creature would eventually kill them. He didn't know, and probably neither did they.
Every instinct urged him away, but Jack let go of Sabine's hand and moved forward, closer to the fight. If only he could get a clearer shot. If only —
Callie darted past him and leapt at the bear. Her hand glinted silver, and as she lashed out and the bear screeched with pain and fury from the wound she dealt, the three wolves released their enemy and flinched back from the weapon Callie bore.
It will fall on her and rip her to shreds, Jack thought.
As if his thoughts were prophecy, the bear lunged for her. Callie dove out of the way, dropping her knife as she rolled beyond its reach, but now the bear loomed over her again, and this time it would not fail.
"Hey!" Jack snatched the blade from the ground. The bear twisted toward him, blood streaking its fur and its already viscous mouth yawning and bristling with teeth longer than any bear should have. Drawing its attention from Callie, Jack stood within its shadow, crouched down with the blood-smeared silver knife in one hand, borrowed gun in the other.
"Jack!" Sabine said. "Shoot!"
As the bear roared and reached for him, claws ready to rip, Jack fired his last two bullets. The first missed, but the second stuck its leg.
The beast twisted away, voice thundering with unimaginable pain, rolling and thrashing across the ground. Then it stood and ran for the trees.
"Don't let it get away!" Vukovich growled, his voice only half-human. He ran after it, Louis and the Reverend making to follow.
"No need," Callie said. "Bastard's done for."
As she spoke, the bear struck a tree fifty feet from them, reared up, and fell onto its back in the undergrowth. A cloud of pale dust burst into the air where it had fallen. "Gone," Callie said. "Back to the stuff we're all made of."
"None of us is anything like that thing!" Sabine said, her disgust evident.
Callie sighed, then turned to Jack and Sabine a
nd smiled. "You'd be surprised," she said. Her smile turned sad and her gaze because distant, miles and years away. "I was."
Jack appraised the wolves to see just how badly they were hurt. They had quickly regrouped, pulling close to Jack, Sabine and Callie, ready to face the final beast's attack. They were bloodied and torn, each carrying wounds. Yet they each exuded a strength and ferocity that Jack could not help but respect.
Callie moved away from them, back toward the river.
"They're no enemy of yours," Jack said, but Callie did not even glance at him. Her eyes were fixed on what the three men had become. She was rooting in one of her chest pouches, her frown deepening. Counting bullets, Jack thought. And not happy with how many she's got left.
She held her left hand out for her silver knife and Jack returned it to her.
"The last one," Callie said. "If your . . . friends can hold it down, I'll finish it." She holstered her gun moved the knife to her right hand.
"I don't think the last one is there anymore," Sabine announced. She was swaying where she stood, weakened by her efforts and perhaps by what she had touched upon in that monstrous bear's consciousness. Jack reached for her arm, but she shook him off. "I don't think it's there."
Jack tried to probe outward with his own senses. But his heart was thudding, his ears throbbed, and he could not concentrate.
"I think —" Louis growled, and then the night was broken by a terrible scream. It started as a roar and rose higher, louder, before being suddenly cut off and leaving them in a more dreadful silence.
Something was moving toward them through the trees.
"Jack," Sabine whispered, "I know it!"
The shape burst from the trees and ran at them, and already Jack knew what was to come. The wolves — senses heightened, blood boiling with the fight — spread out and readied themselves for an attack. Callie stood firm, the knife in her hand, her determination in the face of this new threat admirable.
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