Fevre Dream (40 page)

The gun roared and kicked back hard, slamming into Marsh and bruising his arm. Sour Billy’s chest turned red in a hundred places, and the blast threw him backward. The rotten railing of the texas porch gave way behind him, and he went crashing down to the hurricane deck. Still holding his knife, he tried to get to his feet. He reeled and staggered forward dizzily, like a drunk. Marsh jumped down to the hurricane deck after him, and reloaded the gun. Sour Billy grabbed for a pistol stuck through his belt. Marsh gave him two more barrels, and blew him clear off the hurricane deck. The pistol spun from his grip, and Abner Marsh heard Billy scream and smash into something on the way down. He peered down at the forecastle. Billy was lying face-down, twisted at an unnatural angle, a smear of red beneath him. He still had a hold of his goddamned knife, but it didn’t look like he’d be doing any damage with it. Abner Marsh grunted, pulled a couple of fresh shells from his pocket, and turned back toward the texas.

The door to the captain’s cabin stood wide open, and Damon Julian was out on the texas porch facing Joshua, a pale malevolence with black and beckoning eyes. Joshua York stood immobile, like a man entranced.

Marsh wrenched his eyes down to his shotgun and the shells he held in his hand. Pretend he ain’t there, he told himself. You’re in the sun, he can’t come for you, don’t look at him, just load, just load the gun and give him both goddamned barrels right in the face while Joshua holds him still. His hand shook. He steadied it and slid in one shell.

And Damon Julian laughed. At the sound of that laughter Marsh looked up in spite of himself, the second shell still between his fingers. Julian had such music in his laugh, such warmth and good humor, that it was hard to be afraid, hard to remember what he was and the things he could do.

Joshua had fallen to his knees.

Marsh cussed and took three impetuous strides forward, and Julian whirled, still smiling, and came at him. Or tried to. Julian vaulted down to the hurricane deck over the ruined porch, but Joshua saw him, rose, and came leaping after, catching Julian from behind. For a moment they grappled on the deck. Then Marsh heard Joshua cry out in pain, and he looked away and slid the second shell home and closed the gun and looked up again and saw Julian coming, that white face looming up before him and the teeth gleaming, the terrible teeth. His finger tightened convulsively on the trigger before he had the damned gun aimed, and the shot went wild. The recoil sent Marsh sprawling, and that was what probably saved his life. Julian missed him, spun . . . and hesitated when he saw Joshua rising, four long bleeding tracks down his right cheek. “Look at me, Julian,” Joshua called softly. “Look at me.”

Marsh had one shot left. Sprawled on the deck, he raised the shotgun, but he was too slow. Damon Julian tore his eyes away from Joshua and saw the barrel swinging toward him. He whirled, and the shot boomed through empty air. By the time Joshua York had helped Abner Marsh to his feet, Julian had vanished down the stairs. “Go after him!” Joshua said urgently. “And stay alert! He might be waiting for you.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll see he doesn’t leave the boat,” Joshua said. Then he spun and leaped from the edge of the hurricane deck, out over the forecastle, quick and nimble as a cat. He landed a yard from where Sour Billy lay, landed hard and rolled. An instant later he was back up, and darting up the grand staircase.

Marsh took out two more shells and reloaded. Then he went to the stair, peered down it warily, and began to descend step by careful step, the shotgun held at the ready. The wood creaked beneath his tread, but there was no other sound. Marsh knew that meant nothing. They moved so silently, all of them.

He had a hunch he knew where Julian would hide. In the grand saloon, or one of the staterooms off it. Marsh kept his trigger finger tensed, and went on in, pausing to let his eyes adjust to the darkness.

Way at the far end of the cabin, something moved. Marsh aimed and froze, then eased off. It was Joshua.

“He hasn’t come out,” Joshua called, his head moving as his eyes—so much better than Marsh’s—raked the cabin.

“I figured he hadn’t,” Marsh said. All of a sudden it felt cold in the cabin. Cold and still, like the breath from a long-closed tomb. It was too dark. Marsh couldn’t see anything but vaguely menacing shadows. “I need some goddamned light,” he said. He jerked the shotgun upward and fired one barrel up at the skylight. The report echoed deafeningly in the enclosed cabin, and the glass disintegrated. Shards and sunlight came raining down. Marsh took out a shell to reload. “I don’t see nothing,” he said, stepping forward with the gun under his arm. The long cabin was utterly still and empty as far as he could see. Maybe Julian was crouched behind the bar, Marsh thought. Cautiously he moved toward it.

A vague tinkling sound touched his ears, the clatter of crystals clinking together in the wind. Abner Marsh frowned.

And Joshua cried,
“Abner! Above you!”

Marsh looked up just as Damon Julian released his hold on the great swaying chandelier and came plunging down at him.

Marsh tried to raise and aim his shotgun, but it was too late and he was too damned slow. Julian landed right on top of him, and sent the gun spinning from Marsh’s grasp, and both of them went down. Marsh tried to roll free. Something grabbed him, pulled. He smashed out blindly with a huge rough fist. The answering blow came out of nowhere and nearly tore his head off. For a moment he lay stunned. His arm was seized and wrenched roughly behind him. Marsh screamed. The pressure did not let up. He tried to push himself to his feet, and his arm was bent upward with awful force. He heard it snap, and he screamed again, louder, as the pain hammered through him. He was pushed roughly to the deck, his face hard against the moldy carpeting. “Struggle, my dear Captain, and I’ll break your other arm,” Julian’s mellow voice told him. “Remain still.”

“Get away from him!” Joshua said. Marsh lifted his eyes and saw him standing twenty feet away.

“I hardly think so,” Julian replied. “Do not move, dear Joshua. If you come at me, I will tear out Captain Marsh’s throat before you are within five feet. Stay where you are and I will spare him. Do you understand?”

Marsh tried to move, and bit his lip in anguish. Joshua stood his ground, hands poised like claws in front of him. “Yes,” he said, “I understand.” His gray eyes looked deadly, but uncertain. Marsh looked around for the shotgun. It lay five feet away, well beyond his reach.

“Good,” said Damon Julian. “Now, why don’t we make ourselves comfortable?” Marsh heard Julian pull over a chair. He seated himself just behind Marsh. “I’ll sit here, in the shadows. You can take a seat beneath that shaft of sunlight the captain so obligingly let into the saloon. Go on, Joshua. Do as I say, unless you want to see him die.”

“If you kill him, there will be nothing between us,” Joshua said.

“Perhaps I am willing to take that risk,” Julian replied. “Are you?”

Joshua York looked around slowly, frowned, took up a chair and moved it beneath the shattered skylight. He seated himself in the sun, a good fifteen feet away from them.

“Take off your hat, Joshua. I want to see your face.”

York grimaced, removed his wide-brimmed hat, and sent it sailing off into the shadows.

“Fine,” said Damon Julian. “Now we can wait together. For a while, Joshua.” He laughed lightly. “Until dark.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Aboard the Steamer
Fevre Dream,
May 1870

Sour Billy Tipton opened his eyes and tried to scream. Nothing passed his lips but a soft whimper. He sucked in his breath, and swallowed blood. Sour Billy had drunk enough blood to recognize the taste. Only this time it was his own blood. He coughed and fought for air. He didn’t feel so good. His chest was on fire all over, and it was wet where he was lying. Blood, more blood. “Help me,” he called out, weakly. No one could have heard him more than three feet away. He shuddered, and closed his eyes again, like he could maybe sleep and make the hurt go away.

But the hurt stayed. Sour Billy lay there for the longest time, his eyes closed, breathing ragged breaths that made his chest shake and scream. He couldn’t think of nothing but the blood that was seeping out of him, the deck hard against his face, and the smell. There was some awful smell, all around him. Finally Sour Billy recognized it. He had gone and shit in his pants. He couldn’t feel nothing, but he could smell it. He began to cry.

Finally Sour Billy Tipton could not cry anymore. His tears had dried up, and it hurt too much. It hurt awful bad. He tried to think about something else, about something besides the pain, so it would maybe leave him alone. Slowly it came back to him. Marsh and Joshua York, the shotgun going off in his face. They had come to hurt Julian, he remembered, and he had tried to stop them. Only this time he wasn’t fast enough. He tried to call out again. “Julian!” he called, a little louder than he had before, but still not very loud.

No answer. Sour Billy Tipton whimpered, and opened his eyes again. He had fallen, fallen all the way from the hurricane deck. He was on the forecastle, he saw. And it was daylight. Damon Julian couldn’t hear him. And even if he did, it was so bright, it was the morning, Julian wouldn’t come to him, Julian couldn’t come until dark. By dark he would be dead. “I’ll be dead by dark,” he said aloud, so softly he hardly heard it himself. He coughed and swallowed some more blood. “Mister Julian . . .” he said feebly.

He rested for a while, thinking, or trying to think. He was shot full of holes, he thought. His chest must be raw meat. He ought to be dead, Marsh had been standing right by him, he ought to be dead. Only he wasn’t. Sour Billy sniggered. He knew why he wasn’t dead. Shotguns couldn’t kill
him
. He was almost one of
them
now. It was like Julian had said. Sour Billy had felt it happening. Every time he looked in the mirror he thought he was a little whiter, and his eyes were getting more and more like Damon Julian’s, he could see it hisself, and he thought maybe he could see better in the dark this last year or two. It was the blood had done it, he thought. If only it hadn’t made him sick so much, he might be even further along. Sometimes it made him real sick, and he got bad cramps in his belly and threw up, but he kept on drinking it, like Julian said, and it was making him stronger. He could feel it sometimes, and this proved it, they’d shot him and he’d fallen and he wasn’t dead, no sir, he wasn’t dead. He was healing up, just like Damon Julian would. He was nearly one of them now. Sour Billy smiled, and thought that he would lie there until he was all healed, and then he would get up and go kill Abner Marsh. He could imagine how scared Marsh would be when he saw Billy coming, after the way he’d been shot.

If only he didn’t hurt so much. Sour Billy wondered if it hurt Julian this way, the day that damn dandy of a clerk had stuck the sword through him. Mister Julian had sure showed him. Billy would show a few people, too. He thought about that for a while, about all the things he would do. He would walk down Gallatin Street whenever he liked, and they’d all get real respectful, and he’d have himself beautiful high yaller girls and Creole ladies instead of whores from the dance halls, and when he was through with them he’d have their blood too, and that way no one else would have them, and that way they’d never laugh at him, not like the whores used to laugh at him sometimes, in the old bad days.

Sour Billy Tipton liked thinking about the way it was going to be. But after a time—a few minutes, a few hours, he wasn’t sure no more—he couldn’t. He kept thinking about the pain instead, the way it hurt so bad whenever he tried to breathe. It ought to be hurting less, he thought. But it wasn’t. And he was still bleeding bad, so bad he was starting to feel awful dizzy. If he was healing up, how come he was still bleeding? All of a sudden Sour Billy got afraid. Maybe he wasn’t far enough along yet. Maybe he wasn’t going to heal after all, and get up good as new, and go and get Abner Marsh. Maybe he was just going to bleed to death. He cried out, “Julian.” He cried as loud as he could. Julian could finish the change, could make him better, make him strong. If he could only get Julian it would be all right. Julian would bring him blood to make him strong, Julian would take care of him. Sour Billy knew that. What would Julian ever do without him? He called out again, screaming so hard that his throat almost burst with the pain.

Nothing. Silence. He listened for footsteps, for Julian or one of the others coming to help him. Nothing. Except . . . he listened harder. Sour Billy thought he heard voices. And one of them was Damon Julian’s! He could hear him! He felt weak with relief.

Only Julian couldn’t hear Billy. And even if he could, he might not come, not out into the sun. The thought terrified Sour Billy. Julian would come when it got dark, would come and finish the change. But by dark it would be too late.

He would have to go to Julian, Sour Billy Tipton decided, as he laid there in his blood and pain. He would have to move and go to where Julian was, so Julian could help him.

Sour Billy bit his lip and gathered all his strength and tried to get up.

And he screamed.

The pain that shot through him when he tried to move was a burning knife, a sudden sharp agony that stabbed through his body and drove all thought and hope and fear out of him, until there was nothing but the pain itself. He shrieked and lay still, and his body throbbed. He could feel his heart thumping wildly, and the pain, the pain slowly fading. That was when Sour Billy Tipton realized that he couldn’t feel his legs no more. He tried to wriggle his toes. He couldn’t feel nothing at all down there.

He was dying. It wasn’t fair, Sour Billy thought. He was so close. For thirteen years he had been drinking the blood and getting stronger, changing, and he was so
close
. He was going to live forever, and now they were taking it away from him, robbing him, they’d always robbed him, he’d never had nothing. It was a cheat. The world had cheated him again, the niggers and the Creoles and the rich dandies, they was always cheating him and laughing at him, and now they were cheating him of life, of his revenge, of everything.

He
had
to get to Julian. If only he could make that change, it would all be all right. Otherwise he’d die here, and they’d laugh at him, they’d say he was a fool, trash, all the things they had always said, they’d piss on his grave and laugh at him. He had to get to Mister Julian. Then he would be the one laughing, yes he would.

Sour Billy took a deep breath. He could feel his knife, still gripped in his hand. He moved his arm, took the knife between his teeth, trembling. There! That didn’t hurt so much, he thought. His arms was still all right. His fingers spread and fought for purchase on the wet deck, slick with mold and blood. Then he pulled hard as he could, with his hands and his arms, dragged himself forward. His chest burned, and the knife blade came plunging into his back again, so he shuddered and bit down real hard on the steel between his teeth. He collapsed in exhaustion and agony. But when the hurt finally ebbed a bit, Sour Billy opened his eyes and smiled around his knife blade. He had moved! He had pulled himself forward a whole foot, he thought. Another five or six pulls, and he would be at the foot of the grand staircase. Then he could grab hold of the fancy banister posts and use them to haul himself upward. Them voices were coming from up there, he thought. He could get to them. He knew he could. He
had
to!

Sour Billy Tipton stretched out his arms, dug his long hard nails into the wood, and bit down on his knife.