Night of the Vampires (9 page)

“Transportation. Come on.”

To her surprise, rather than heading out front, he went back in through the house. She noted, approaching the rear door, that there was a cross on the pane—as if it were structural for the window. Above it, as if in design, were a Star of David and a crescent moon.

She looked at Cole.

He shrugged. “Yeah… We're covering all the bases,” he said and smiled. “You can come in, can't you?” It was a challenge.

She smiled sweetly. “Oh, yes, Sheriff. Watch me.”

She entered the house ahead of him. He followed her, locking the door behind him, grinning.

“Why are we in the house when riders came to the front?”

“Because I want the front door kept locked at all times, as much as possible,” he told her. “Can you ride like that?”

She was wearing one of Martha's dresses.

“Never mind. They probably brought a sidesaddle.”

“I can ride any way you want me to,” she assured him.

Cole stared at her, a brow slightly hiked, a small smile curling into his features. She flushed. “Any horse out there!” she said quickly, turning away from him.

He stopped by the hook near the door to get his coat—the coat with all the pockets and vampire-killing paraphernalia—and led the way out the front door, closing it and locking it once she was out.

A rider had come, a man in a Union uniform with sergeant's stripes, leading two handsome bay horses.

Well-fed horses, looking much better than most of those she was accustomed to seeing in Virginia.

“Where are we going? And who is that?” she whispered.

“Sergeant Newcomb. And he's brought us two of the North's finest military horses. It's time. We're on cemetery detail again. Let's go,” he said.

As he spoke, a bolt of lightning flashed across the sky, followed by a deafening clap of thunder.

“Let's get moving. Quickly,” Cole said. “The rain…well, God knows just how hard it will be out there once the rain starts.”

He was right. The sky, so beautiful by morning, was darkening. She looked up at it, disheartened.

“If you're afraid of a little rain…” he suggested.

She lifted her chin and smiled. “I'm not afraid of the day, the night, the lightning or a little rain. However, if
you're
feeling uneasy…”

“If we were smart, we'd both be afraid,” he said. “Miss Fox, after you.”

F
OR ALL THE
clouds, it might as well have been night, and Cole rued the fact that, despite the fine mounts they had waited for, they hadn't started earlier.

There seemed nothing so desolate as a cemetery when the sky darkened by day and the chill wind whistled and moaned through the trees.

Apparently, Megan Fox could ride even in a dress; she moved effortlessly. Cole was curious about her background, how it had felt all the years to know she was different—to have the choice to give in to the side of death and devastation, or to take up the fight against the creatures of evil, of which her father had been one.

Sure, she spoke earnestly and passionately enough, but he could tell she was the ultimate actress when she chose to be. He'd seen her in action at the hospital. And still, there had been something in her voice when she had spoken about General Robert E. Lee that had rung agonizingly true. She admired the man, and more. She loved him.

Oak Hill was a beautiful place, with a chapel built in 1849, natural garden pathways and monuments that lent it an air of bittersweet melancholy. It was large and sweeping, and, like other cemeteries these days, many graves were dug in anticipation of occupants that might never find such a peaceful, final resting plot. There were plots
for families, vaults for families and individual graves. In the mist and darkness, the Gothic chapel stood like a testament to the finality of death, both welcoming and sobering.

The ride had been long through city streets filled with troops on the move, citizens trying to carry on with their lives and, always, the dust of construction. Heading out to Georgetown lessened neither the constant flow of humanity nor the grind of wagons supplying for the massive war machine.

But the cemetery, when they reached it, was quiet. Peaceful beneath a heavy, storm-laden sky from which the gray clouds seemed to cast a fog, rather than rain, down upon the ground. Oak Hill was comparatively new, impressively designed and, therefore, lonely and barren and seeming like a monument to death that stretched forever.

“I don't see anything,” Megan said quietly.

Cole was tempted to whisper himself. The very air around them seemed to demand it.

“What were you expecting? A vampire picnic, tables of the undead, fellows playing cards?”

She cast him a glance that assured him she did not appreciate his sarcasm.

“Same as yesterday?” she suggested.

“Yes, but stay in sight this time.”

They left the horses by the gatehouse, an impressive edifice, and moved along the pathways and small hills and valleys of the cemetery. Cole motioned to Megan that they would move toward the far left first, then, finding nothing, moved in a westerly direction, always at the same pace as one another.

They spent an hour walking, seeing nothing out of
the ordinary. There were stunning new monuments of pristine marble rising high in memory of those now gone. At each mausoleum they stopped, waving at one another before circling the houses of the dead, each keeping watch over the other.

She was good at what she did, Cole thought.

She knew how to be a partner, how to trust him and how to watch his back, as well.

So why didn't he trust her?

She was just like Cody, an anomaly, the blood of a very different creature running through her veins, yet so very human in every other aspect. She was fascinating; she was compelling. She was an extraordinarily beautiful young woman in shape and form and presence, and yet he knew, too, that it was her eyes that kept him most fascinated. When she looked at him, when she spoke earnestly with passion, and even with anger, there was something about her eyes, an emotion so clearly visible in her face that it arrested his heart.

“Anything? No freshly dug ground—nothing?” He called across the space between them.

“Some newly dug graves, but no occupants! And no young ones hiding there, either,” she called back.

“Keep going. The chapel is ahead. We'll rest for a few minutes!”

Cole feared, with the cemetery so empty, that the chapel might be locked. But it was not. They had no sooner reached the doors than the rain burst down at last, and they hurried in, just ahead of the first heavy drops.

The wind whipped up to an even faster tempo. Cole pressed hard on the door to close it.

It was dark and shadowy within, but it was dry.

“It's a bit chilly,” Megan said.

“It's spring, and it's Washington. Cold one minute, hotter than hell the next.” He hesitated. “You do feel the cold, huh?”

She glared at him. “We feel everything. I thought you and Cody were tighter than thieves.”

“Just asking.”

“You never will trust me, will you?”

“I haven't known you that long,” he told her. “And trust needs to be earned.”

“I actually think that I earned it, saving your life,” she informed him. “I saved
your
life, young lady,” he said with an indignant sneer.

She sniffed. “You wouldn't have gotten through the first night without me.”

“We managed fine in many a worse situation,” Cole said. “And we've really just been introduced.”

“Ah, yes, but we've quickly had to get to know one another,” she said drily.

The rain pounded the chapel. The wind outside made a sound akin to crying, as if the elements themselves mourned all who lay interred in the cemetery. He smiled. She seemed exceptionally
human
as they waited in the confines of the chapel—so warm, vibrant and vital. He supposed he should actually put some distance between them.

He didn't. Instead, he took her hands and rubbed them between his own. She didn't pull away. She looked up at him with her huge golden eyes.

“Let me give you my coat,” he said.

She shook her head. “No, no, I'm fine, really. Your coat is your defense.”

“Yes, well, you know how to use its tools as well as I.”

“I don't need them, though. My blood is my defense.”

“And you can be killed, just as any vampire, just as any human.”

She smiled. “It would take a lot.”

“All it would take is a determined enemy with a stake or a good sharp sword,” he reminded her practically.

“We're in a chapel.”

“And you believe that a vampire—a full-blooded vampire—can't enter a chapel? There are many religions around the world, you know,” he said.

“Religion doesn't matter. What matters is the soul, or the heart. Evil can't dwell in a house of holiness,” she told him.

It was so similar to something that Cody had once said to him.

“Tell me more about your life,” he suggested, indicating a seat in one of wooden benches before the small altar.

She arched a brow. After she sat down, she noted, “You know my life. When I was young, my mother told me what I was.”

“A vampire.”

“And a bastard,” she said drily. “But she used the name Fox, and my birth is registered under the name Fox. My mother was an amazing woman. She grew up in a system where love didn't really exist much, marriages were planned and expected, and she knew that her stepfather intended her for a rich planter who would make her the main household ‘slave' if you will. She knew that my father was different, but she went with him anyway.
Even knowing that he wouldn't—or couldn't—stay. She made her own life.” Megan sighed and explained, “She met my father at a barbecue. She hated her life, and she didn't want
marriage
to a man when there was no love, when it just a matter of the
proper
way to live her life, with a man seen as
advantageous
for her in society. She fell in love at first sight, and ran away with my father instead, knowing that he was running away with the world. They had their time together, I was conceived, and then I believe my father thought that he had to run again. My mother lived on her own and met my stepfather, who was a wonderful man. He accepted me, another man's child. For all that I was.”

“How?”

She smiled at him. “She taught. She taught young ladies, but she did much more than teach them the proper way to sit and stand and hold a teacup. She loved history and the world and old legends. She was always searching for the true roots of vampirism, and studied stories from all over the world. She did believe that it was a disease, and she was always certain that one day—maybe far in the future—medicine and science would catch up with the ‘disease.'”

“Ah, a true scholar,” Cole murmured.

“And I had a wonderful stepfather,” she said.

“Had?”

“He was a scholar, too, a teacher. They had a good marriage, and he was kind to me. He died just before the war, of natural causes. If I had known…”

“Known that he was dying?” Cole asked her.

She nodded, smoothing a fold in her skirt. “I would have been tempted to save him. His heart gave out. Suddenly. If I had been there…I might have saved him.”

“Turned him?” Cole asked. She looked so distressed, looking intently at her skirt still. She was about the fiercest creature he had ever met, and yet he wanted to touch her and console her. Hold her.

It seemed bizarrely comfortable in the chapel then, the two of them sitting close together, taking warmth from one another. He set an arm around her, rubbing her shoulders, to give her more warmth.

“And it might have been a mistake. Your ‘friend' from last night was a mistake, no matter what you might wish to believe.”

“Killing him?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Him being a vampire. He needed to be—put down.”

“It sounds like we're talking about horses.”

“We're talking about something akin to rabid dogs.”

“But all vampires aren't rabid dogs. In the eyes of most men, I'm a vampire. My stepfather never suggested that I should have been put down.”

“Where's your mother?” he asked.

She winced. “Dead, too. The first year of the war. She was young, she was healthy…but she caught a cold and it worsened and…and I was gone. So I have lost them both.”

“I'm sorry,” Cole said gently, and he meant it.

She nodded, and he could feel her squaring her shoulders; she didn't want to talk about the past.

“What about you—cowboy?” she asked teasingly. “You're a sheriff on the frontier, you have apparently dealt with Indians, outlaws—vampires—and more. And yet you loathe war.”

“Well, I'm not particularly fond of outlaws, either,” he told her lightly.

“How did you escape the war?” she asked him. “I mean, at the beginning, young men were fighting to get into units. And you went to a military academy, didn't you say? Wouldn't you have been in the military then, an officer of some sort?”

“I was in West Point briefly ten years ago. Many—most—of our Mexican-American war heroes became teachers at one time or another, still were leaders after the war.” he told her.

She drew away from him, astonished. “Then, you are familiar with most of the leaders—on both sides!”

“Yes.”

“How did you secure an appointment—and how did you leave without going into the military?” she demanded.

He laughed. “I didn't desert or any such thing. My grandfather was a Revolutionary War brigadier general, and so my appointment at the Academy. I went through school, but resigned my commission when my father died. I went home to Victory. They needed a sheriff.”

“Your father had been the sheriff?”

“Exactly. And it's my point as regards the war, as well. I knew many of the fine officers leading both sides of the war effort now. They're mostly good men. They believe that they're right. They all believe that God is on their side. Most of those men fought
together
in various skirmishes, and though on the field they may be enemies, in their hearts, they're still friends.”

“It was after Joseph Johnston was injured at the Battle of Seven Pines that Lee took control and called his forces the Army of Northern Virginia,” Megan said. “He's simply an excellent tactician.”

Cole nodded. It was impossible to know what the
horrible conflagration would come to before it ended. Mothers in the North often thought it would be good riddance if they all just said goodbye to the South. The newspapers thrived on printing the horrendous photos taken on the battlefields. Political pressure could end it all. Abe Lincoln was coming up for reelection, and though the North had started winning some of the major battles, there were many antiwar politicians who just might win election. If they did so, the tide could be turned and Congress might vote to stop the war and give the South the freedom to become an independent country. Lincoln, with his passion and determination, was the heart of the Union.

Even with its brilliant military men, the South was slowly strangling. The coastal blockades were keeping supplies from arriving from Europe. Food grew scarcer daily. The industrial North was producing guns and bullets on an unholy schedule. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation had turned into a war with a cause for the North, and that would influence voters, as well.

Cole wondered what would have happened if the South had taken the battle onto Northern soil immediately, while its troops were young and fresh and still in decent boots, with food to give them strength.

They'd never know. Amazing, though, how much he thought about a war he purportedly didn't give a thought about at all….

“Cole,” Megan said, so softly he barely heard her.

But something in her voice alerted him.

What?
he mouthed.

“There…in the back. I saw something. Something moved.”

He looked. He saw nothing. He pulled away from her
though and rose, stretching as if he were just about to check on the rain.

He did so, opening the door just a bit. The rain had ceased. The day remained wet, gray and cold. He turned back toward Megan, who had risen, as well. He nodded to her. She saw his eyes, and she knew that they needed to take the same care they had outside and head to the front of the little chapel together.