Devlin's Curse (13 page)

When the darkness fell they went their separate ways. They met again the next night and he presented her with a pale flower. When she smiled in thanks he could feel a blush rise up to his cheekbones.

When the darkness fell on the third day, they walked side by side through the gravestones. All of a sudden she whirled and embraced him. Stunned, and overjoyed, he hardly noticed she had sunk her teeth into his neck. From that time onwards he became her willing donor and a dark love blossomed between them. She had promised to turn him before the Vampire Ball so that they could celebrate their commitment of eternal love together. At the moment he hovered on the edge of mortality and he looked forward to a life without death with his beloved.

Today is the day,
he mused.

He felt happy as he put the final finishing touches on a new pine coffin. The bell on his front door jingled and pulled him from his reverie. He looked up to see a large man in a buffalo hide coat enter his shop. 

“Can I help you mister?” he asked. 

The man’s lips twitched into a semblance of a smile. He looked down and glanced into a shiny object that he held in his palm. Alarm rose in Thaddeus’ breast, his senses came fully alert. 

“Well, yes sir. I think youse got something I need.”

The undertaker backed away. 

Lance chuckled. “You vultures know everything that happens in this town. I want to know about the Bloodsuckers.”

Thaddeus shook his head. “I don’t know what you are talking about, mister.”

Lance sprang forward and whipped out his Bowie knife. He waved it in front of Thaddeus’ face. “Yer a lyin’ sack of shit! I got me a glimpse a ya, and I can smell it on ya nohow.”

Thaddeus backed further away. He had no defense. He was not a full Vampire and had no powers. He didn’t even have a gun as he abhorred firearms. When he felt the bite of the knife against his throat he blubbered, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he spilled his guts and told the man everything that he knew about the Vampires of Virginia City. When he finished Lance released him but only for a moment. Just long enough for him to whip a hickory stake out of his coat and plunge it into Thaddeus’ breast. 

While Thaddeus writhed in agony, Lance took out his bowie knife and carved him up like a deer, tasting a morsel here and there, for good measure.

He wiped his knife on the dead man’s coat and left Thaddeus’ shop humming a discordant tune. He patted his paunch.

“ I’m fixin ta git warmed up! That undertaker was just a snack. I can’t wait to taste the flesh of Devlin Winter fried up with some of Wing’s noodles,”
he mused.

The sun did not set in Virginia City, nestled as it was against peaks of Mt. Davidson. The night fell instead over the town, like every other night, the way a dark curtain would fall over the stage of a Victorian melodrama. In this setting, death and life in this town was punctuated by the sound of black powder bullets.

Inside his mansion on B Street Big Jim was at home. He sat down to a hearty supper of roast beef, potatoes and glazed carrots and all if it washed down with fine red wine. Then his Chinese servant entered the room and bowed. Big Jim didn’t like to be interrupted in the middle of his feast. He glanced up from his plate and barked at him.

“What is it, Chow? Can’t you see I’m eating?”

“A man to see you,” Chow said. 

Big Jim threw down his napkin. “God damn it, who is it? Tell him to wait.”

Chow bowed his head again. “His name is Peabody and he is most insistent.” 

Big Jim frowned.
How dare that carrion bird come to my house! What if the neighbors see someone like Lance coming around? Best to get rid of him quick!

He got up from the table

“Show him in,” he said. 

Chow left and seconds later Lance entered the room. He paused then looked around at all the elegant furnishings and sneered.

“Ya got yerself set up real nice, Diamond, fancy doodads and all.”

“What do you want, Lance? Couldn’t it wait until tomorrow?”

“I brung ya somethin’. A sorta peek at what’s ta come.”  He reached into his coat and pulled out a limp, bloodied patch of white hair and flung it down next to Big Jim’s plate.”

“What the hell? What is this?”

Lance grinned. “It’s the scalp of’n that sourdough Boots, ya won’t have ta worry about that old buzzard no more.”

Bile rose in Big Jim’s throat. He swallowed it down. He had unleashed this monster and now he was finally getting some results. With Boots out of the way he would hire a gang of miners to bust their way into the shaft of the Gilded Bird.

“What about Devlin Winter?” he asked. 

Lance shrugged. He helped himself to a glass of Big Jim’s wine and gulped it down in one swallow. He wiped his lips with his hand before answering. “It won’t be long till I carve him up fer good, just you make… no never mind.”

Big Jim grinned slyly. He filled up Lance’s glass then poured another one out. “Let’s drink to that!”

Word of the Undertaker’s horrible death reached the Vampire community swiftly. Ligea though stunned and disturbed by it stubbornly refused to contact Devlin or to be drawn in to his war. She had heard rumors of Big Jim, the Gilded Bird, and the disturbing events that had taken place in the mine. She had not heeded to them. In her mind the survival and protection of the Hive must come first. A meeting of the council was needed and she sent her doorman with notes to all the members. As she waited for them to arrive she paced back and forth across her parlor, her brain filled with curses for Devlin, and the danger he had stirred up in her town. Presently she heard a knock and her paramour, Virgil brought her news.

“They are here.”

“Show them in,” she said.

Virgil did as directed and led a small group of four people into the parlor. Ligea asked them to sit while she remained standing. 

“ I have just heard the news of Thaddeus, a tragedy, and one that shall not go unavenged. Virgil and I will look into this matter, but for now I warn you, we must do nothing.”

The council shifted in their seats. A blond woman, Thaddeus’ librarian, who was dressed in a severe, black bombazine spoke up.

“We cannot let this stand, Domina Ligea. Since when have we become the prey?”

Ligea could see that the Widow was holding back her tears.

“No, we must not react. Devlin Winter has heaped this on us and he must be the one to deal with it. We cannot risk the safety of the community especially on the eve of our Grand Ball.”

“Let me talk to him, make him deal with this mess,” Virgil pleaded.

Ligea was adamant. “No, we must not take any action, not yet.”

“What about Dahlia? She is sticking her nose into everything up on C Street and beyond.”  This comment came from another one of the Council members, a prominent mine owner.

Ligea made a sound. “She is a bane. A little troublemaker I should have never taken her in. I know this concerns all of us but I must ask you, and the rest of the community, to wait. Devlin must be the one to make this right. I believe there is more that has been revealed through this attack. An age old enemy threatens all the Vampires in Virginia City. One that Devlin and his business have unleashed.”

“What could that be?” the mine owner asked.

Ligea took a long drag from her cigarette. She blew the smoke out slowly.

“A Zombie, my children, a flesh eater by the name of Lance Peabody along with his undead crew, who have a taste for Vampires.”

Chapter Nineteen

Cat and Mouse

D
evlin’s shoulder hurt like the very devil. The styptic had stopped the bleeding and the whiskey kisses and lovemaking had dulled it temporarily. The pain was a reminder of what he was up against. He should not have come to the salon and endangered Esmeralda. Even now Peabody and his scum might be watching his every move. As quietly as he could he rose from her bed and dressed to leave.

Esmeralda sat up, naked except for a sheet that she clutched to her breast. Her hair fell around her shoulders in a wild tangle and she slid off the mattress to go to him. She placed her hand on his arm. Devlin looked down at her hand on his sleeve and paused.

“I am ready for the truth,” she said.

“Would that change things, Angel?”

Esmeralda drew the sheet closer. “It might give me a reason to stay and not to take the first train out of Virginia City in the morning.”

Devlin hesitated. He was not sure that he was ready to relive the past yet but he knew for certain that if he did not address it his Angel might very well disappear from his life again.

I could not endure that
, he thought.
Not after what we have become to each other
. 

He sat down on the edge of the bed and ran his fingers through his shoulder length black hair.

“Esmeralda, you know what I am.”

Esmeralda grasped one of his hands. “Talk to me Devlin. I need to understand.”

Devlin reached into an inside pocket of his vest and pulled out a small oval object and handed it to her. It was a miniature oil portrait of a blond woman dressed in the fashion of the seventeenth century.

Esmeralda stared at the portrait and she gasped.

“Who is this?”

Devlin looked away. “Her name was Arabella, my wife and your very image, your doppelganger in another lifetime.”

“What happened to her? Is she at the center of this deadly game you are involved in? If so I want to know all of it not just what you have chosen to tell me. I won’t be a pawn ever again.”

Before he spoke again, Devlin poured himself a brandy from the decanter next to the bed. When he spoke there was a faraway look in his eyes.

“I grew up in a cold stone castle, the son of a brutal warlord and a Vampire. When my father died, not on the battlefield but between the legs of a tavern maid, I was sixteen years old with three younger brothers to care for. From that day forward I was dogged by a dark, shadowy, malevolent entity, one that flirted at the edge of my consciousness stealing the joy from my life.

By the time I reached twenty I had taken my father’s place as Lord both at the castle and on the battlefield. One morning when I was returning home after purchasing a new horse, a pall was lifted from my life. A bright golden light shone in the forest and as I got closer I saw it was the sunlight reflecting on the golden hair of a young woman. A delicate beautiful young woman dressed in a white flowing gown with a crown of flowers in her hair. She danced and skipped among the ferns to imaginary music. For a moment I thought that I had had come upon a forest nymph or even a fairy queen. Her name was Arabella and she had come to Transylvania as an orphan from the British Isles. She lived as the ward of a neighboring Lord.  She was so different so full of life and laughter that I knew the instant I saw her that I must have her. Like a man possessed I pursued her. I heaped gold upon her guardian for her hand in marriage. Once permission was granted I married her hastily, perhaps impulsively. I wanted to capture and hold her as if she might disappear like fairy dust. My mother had warned me that Arabella was fey and not ‘of this world’. And she also warned that the shadow, the beast that stalked the house of Dracul also stalked my young wife. I ignored her dire prophecies. I also ignored Arabella’s strange behavior. Her obsession with the forest and its creatures her sudden mood swings and the nightmares that plagued her. I loved her without reason and thought she could do no wrong. 

In my first year of marriage I was called to go to battle against an army of vicious Tartar invaders and was forced to leave Arabella alone in the castle. The Beast, the shadowy demonic creature that lurked in wait for her, chose that time when I was away to hunt down its prey. Arabella was in the chapel when the beast attacked and violated her. By the time I got there it was too late to save her.

When I first came to Red Bluff it was to kill a demon. His name was Haures, whom the townsfolk knew as Horace Henessey. I had been led to believe that after I killed him I would have a chance at mortality. When I saw you on the street that day in Red Bluff I knew that history was repeating itself. I wanted it to end there and to spare innocent lives. The demon that possessed Hennessey was the same demon that killed my wife Arabella so long ago. It was my hope, and perhaps a desperate fantasy, that she had returned to me and lived once more in you.

It is another such demon that we are dealing with now, one that has been banished to the bowels of the earth, here in Virginia City, deep in the Gilded Bird mine. As before in order to gain dominion over mortals it has chosen to possess another likely host.  A man just as corrupt and self-serving as Horace Hennessey was.” 

Esmeralda studied his face. “Big Jim Diamond?”

Devlin nodded. “Yes.”

“But why must you be the one to deal with this? Is not your role ended after Red Bluff?”

Devlin did not answer. He pulled her forward for a swift kiss. “That is all you need to know at this point. I will not involve you again.”

“I am already involved and in more ways than you think. We are lovers so it affects us both. If history is repeated then we have lived a life before, then once again. I am the bait and it will use me once again to destroy you! ”

Esmeralda pulled away from him. She did not mention that Diamond had paid her a visit but wondered if he already knew. She had glimpsed Walking Ghost in the shadows of the crabapple tree across the street night after night. Annie from her place in the afterlife had warned her to leave. She felt paralyzed by a mixture of love and fear, yet through it all she sensed a solid kernel of resolve build up inside her breast.

The next evening Virgil knocked on the door of Devlin’s railcar. He had ignored his queen’s warnings and decided to approach Winter to enlist his help. He believed they were fighting a common foe. A Chinese man, in a dark silk suit, opened the door and bade him to enter. He found Devlin sitting in the parlor of the railcar reading the newspaper. He looked up when Virgil entered.

“Virgil, this is a surprise. What brings you here?”

“This is not a social call. Winter you are a plague on our kind.”

Devlin smiled. “Has Ligea sent her lapdog to chastise me?”

“Ligea does not know I came, in fact, she begged me not to involve you.”

“Well? Enlighten me”

He motioned for Virgil to sit but he remained standing.

“I’ll not dredge up past history in regards to you and your so called ‘quests’ dabbling with demons and mortals with no regards to the danger of exposing yourself or the Hive. But this time I must reluctantly admit that the threat has come too close to home.” Virgil reached inside his vest pocket and brought out a crisp white envelope. He handed it to Devlin. “An invitation to the Vampire Ball. I strongly suggest you attend.”

Devlin glanced at the card. “I accept your invitation,” he said. He slipped it back in the envelope and looked at Virgil. “I heard about the Undertaker. I promise he will not go un-avenged.”

Virgil nodded, then turned and left without a word.

On the top floor of O’Brien’s and Costello’s Shooting Gallery and Saloon, a Barbary Coast dive located at the south end of C Street were a couple of Peabody’s henchmen. They had been on the trail of Devlin Winter’s Red Indian. They had followed him like hounds watching for a chance to bushwhack him, but had failed. They fortified themselves with rotgut before they told the Boss about the botched job.

None of the men who worked for Peabody could really recall why they did, or how they had joined up with him. They were just hired guns that had fallen into company with the buffalo skinner and it was all a murky haze in their minds. They did what they were told and could have as much liquor and poontang as they wanted.

They were a horny bunch.

After finishing off a bottle of 100 proof rotgut, aptly called Coffin Varnish with the distinct aftertaste of gunpowder, their bleary eyes beheld a miraculous sight.

The gun smoke, from the shooting gallery in the dive, parted and a vision stepped through. They were poleaxed; struck dumb at the sight of a dark haired girl with celestial blue eyes and porcelain white skin. She was dressed sassily in a white corset and black lace skirt that was hiked high above one knee. When she smiled they saw a flash of a diamond and when she sashayed over to them they nearly fell off their chairs.

“Howdy boy’s. Buy a girl a drink?”

Dahlia placed her hand on her hip and arched her back to give them a birds-eye view of her charms. She felt for the tiny vial in the pocket of her skirt. When they ordered a new bottle of whisky she offered to pour.  They didn’t notice the generous shots she laced liberally with arsenic. The effect was not immediate. They were not aware how it slowly spread through their pulp like brains and numbed them. How it was not enough to kill them but enough to make them night blind. 

After a few rounds of the tampered brew the two men saw Dahlia disappear back through the cloud of blue smoke. They tried to stop her, tried to get up from their chairs but fell back down like they were hit by a ton of lead. They gave up and continued to finish the bottle of whiskey.

After the humiliating incident at the Emerald Salon, Sara Fenn, and her sign toting followers, experienced a distinct dip in their morale. Sara cursed Esmeralda Jones when overnight, members of her Washoe Woman’s Temperance League, disappeared for parts unknown. She was now back on D Street, in that very crucible of depravity, in search of new recruits. She’d known that abused women, beaten by men and bedeviled by drink would make the best advocates for new sisters. She would take them to the Lutheran church, lift them up wash them up and fill them with the fire of the Lord.

And then arm them with an axe.

As she walked down the dusty street she saw something that made the blood boil in her veins. A low reprobate of a man, a drunken oaf, was dragging a young woman in to the shadows between two buildings. Sara heard the young woman scream and the sound of a loud slap.

Sara Fenn raised her axe and ran across the street.

“Stop! Stop! Vile seducer, stop this instance!”

She saw the man turn his head towards her voice. Sara skidded to a stop as burning red eyes bore into hers. Instinctively she swung her axe. The last thing she remembered was the juicy ‘THUNK’ as it buried itself in his skull before a swarm of shadowy figures overwhelmed her and bit and tore into her flesh.

After Virgil left, Devlin turned the invitation over and over in his hands. He understood Virgil’s ire. As a loner Devlin was respected in the Vampire community, feared even. He was also looked upon with suspicion as someone who preferred to associate with the living. Truth be told he had no wish to live in the shadows and now found himself drawn once more into the struggle between Light and Darkness.  A tendency he attributed to his grim childhood.

Devlin strapped on his gun belts and sword and threw on his black duster. He tucked the invitation from Virgil into his vest pocket and headed in the direction of B Street.

Let Peabody’s scum have a go at me now,
he thought.

Virgil had rubbed him the wrong way with his sanctimonious manner and now he was in a foul mood. His mood did not improve when he reached the Emerald Salon and found that Esmeralda was not there. He looked around for Jamie but when the youth was nowhere to be found, a feeling of alarm shot through him. He saw Kuong polishing glasses at the bar and walked up to him.

“Kuong, do you know where your mistress has gone?”

Kuong looked Devlin in the eye. “Missy she get message, go to D Street, no good.”

Devlin nodded and then slid a silver coin across the counter. He walked back out into the night air, scenting it like a wolf.

Esmeralda and Jamie had been called to see a patient in a crib on D Street. When they arrived they were led by a woman called Ma into a dark cubbyhole of a bedroom that was lit by a single kerosene lamp. A woman lay there under the thin blanket and soiled sheets, she had a familiar face one that was pinched and contorted with pain. She thrashed about with fever. Esmeralda stepped closer.

“It’s Sara Fenn!”

“ Do you know her Miss Esmeralda?” Jamie asked

“ Remember the Suffragette, from the Women’s League?”

“ Oh lordy, lordy,” Jamie replied, his eyes round with fear.

Esmeralda pulled back the blanket and nearly vomited. Sara’s left breast had been completely chewed off as if an animal had attacked her and she panted like a dog.

Esmeralda leaned in towards her.

“Miss Fenn can you hear me? Who did this to you?”