Fevre Dream (41 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Aboard the Steamer
Fevre Dream,
May 1870

The hours passed in silence, a silence laced with fear.

Abner Marsh sat close to Damon Julian, with his back against the black marble bar, nursing his broken arm and sweating. Julian had finally allowed him to get up off his belly, when the throbbing in his arm had gotten to be too much for Marsh, and he began to moan. In this position it didn’t seem to hurt so much, but he knew the agony would come flooding back the instant he tried to move. So Marsh sat very still, and held his arm, and thought.

Marsh had never been much of a chess player, as Jonathon Jeffers had proved a half-dozen times. Sometimes he even forgot how the damned pieces moved from game to game. But even now he knew enough to recognize a stalemate when he saw one.

Joshua York was sitting stiffly in his chair, his eyes dark and unreadable at this distance, his whole body tense. The sunlight was beating down on him, searing the life from him, burning off his strength as it burned off the river mists every morning. He did not move. Because of Marsh. Because Joshua knew that if he attacked, Abner Marsh would
be choking on his own blood before York could possibly reach Julian. Maybe Joshua could kill Damon Julian then, and maybe not, but either way it wouldn’t make much difference to Marsh.

Julian was stalemated too. If he killed Marsh, he would lose his protection. Then Joshua would be free to come at him. Clearly Damon Julian feared that. Abner Marsh knew how it was. Defeat will do that to a man, even to such a thing as called itself Damon Julian. Julian had broken Joshua York dozens of times, and bled him to seal the submission. York had triumphed only once. But that was enough. The certainty was gone from Julian. Fear lived inside him like a maggot in a corpse.

Marsh felt weak and helpless. His arm hurt like hell, and there was nothing he could do. When he was not studying York and Julian, his eyes returned to the shotgun. Too far, he told himself. Too far. When he sat up against the bar, it had put the gun even farther away. Seven feet at least. It was impossible. Marsh knew he could never do it, even at the best of times. And with a broken arm . . . he gnawed his lip and tried to think of something else. If it was Jonathon Jeffers sitting where Marsh sat, maybe he would have been able to figure something out. Something clever and surprising and devious. But Jeffers was dead, and Marsh had only himself to rely on, and the only thing he could think to do was the simple, direct, stupid thing—make a grab for that goddamned shotgun. If he did that, Marsh knew, he would die.

“Does the light bother you, Joshua?” Julian asked once, after they had been seated a long time. “You really must get used to it if you are to become one of them. All the good cattle love the sunlight.” He smiled. Then, quickly as it had come, the smile faded. Joshua York did not reply, and Julian did not speak again.

Watching him, Marsh thought how much Julian himself seemed to have decayed, just as the steamer and Sour Billy had gone to rot. He was different now, somehow, different and even more frightening. After that one, brief question, he had no more taunts. He had no words at all. He did not look at Joshua York or at Marsh or at anything in particular. His eyes stared off into nothingness, cold and black and dead as coals. They still had a lambent quality about them, and in the shadows where Julian was seated they sometimes seemed to burn with their own dim light beneath his pale, heavy brow. But they did not seem human. Nor did Julian. Marsh remembered the night that Julian had come aboard the
Fevre Dream
. When he had looked into his eyes then, it was as if he saw masks falling away, one after the other in endless succession, until at the bottom, beneath it all, the beast emerged. Now it was different. Now it was almost as if the masks had ceased to exist. Damon Julian had been as evil a man as Marsh had ever met, but part of his evil had been human evil: his malevolence, his lies, his terrible musical laugh, his cruel delight in torment, his love for beauty and its ruin. Now all that seemed to be gone. Now there was only the beast, hunched in the darkness with feral eyes, cornered and fearful, unreasoning. Now Julian did not ridicule Joshua, nor expound on good and evil and strength and weakness, nor fill Marsh with soft, rotten promises. Now he only sat and waited, shrouded in darkness, his ageless face devoid of all expression, his eyes ancient and empty.

Abner Marsh realized then that Joshua had been right. Julian was mad, or worse than mad. Julian was a ghost now, and the thing that lived inside that body was all but mindless.

Yet, Marsh thought bitterly,
it
would be the winner. Damon Julian might die, as all the other masks had died in turn, through the long centuries. But the beast would go on. Julian dreamed of dark and sleep, but the beast could never die. It was clever, and patient, and strong.

Abner Marsh eyed the shotgun again. If only he could reach it. If only he was as fast and strong as he had been forty years ago. If only Joshua could hold the beast’s attention long enough. But it was no good. The beast would not meet Joshua’s eyes. Marsh was neither fast nor strong, and his arm was broken and in agony. He could never lurch to his feet and reach the gun in time. The barrel was pointed in the wrong direction too. It had fallen so it pointed at Joshua. If it pointed the other way, maybe it would be worth the risk. Then he would just have to dive for the gun, raise it up quick, and pull the trigger. But the way it lay, he would have to grab it and turn all the way around to fire at the thing that had called itself Julian. With a broken arm. No. Marsh knew it would be futile. The beast was too fast.

A moan escaped Joshua’s lips, a half-suppressed cry of pain. He put a hand to his brow, then leaned forward and buried his face in his hands. His skin was pinkish already. Before long it would be red. Then charred and black and burned. Abner Marsh could see the vitality ebbing from him. What will kept him in that burning circle of sun, Marsh could not know. Joshua had guts, though, damned if he didn’t. All of a sudden Marsh had to say something. “Kill him,” he called out loudly. “Joshua, get out of there and go for him, goddamn it. Never mind me.”

Joshua York looked up and smiled weakly. “No.”

“Goddamnit all to hell, you stubborn fool. Do like I tell you! I’m a goddamned old man, my life don’t mean nothin’. Joshua,
do like I’m tellin’ you!
”

Joshua shook his head and buried his face in his hands again.

The beast was staring at Marsh strangely, as if it could not comprehend his words, as if it had forgotten all the speech it ever knew. Marsh looked in its eyes and shivered. His arm hurt, and he had tears hiding in the back of his eyes. He cussed and swore until his face turned red. It was better than weeping like some damned woman. Then he called out, “You been one hell of a partner, Joshua. I ain’t goin’ to forget you as long as I live.”

York smiled. Even the smile was pained, Marsh could see. Joshua was weakening visibly. The light was going to kill him, and then Marsh would be here alone.

They had hours and hours of daylight left. But hours passed. Night would come. Abner Marsh couldn’t stop it coming no more’n he could reach that goddamned useless shotgun. The sun would set and darkness would come creeping over the
Fevre Dream,
and the beast would smile and rise from its chair. All along the grand saloon the doors would open, as the others stirred and woke, all the children of the night, the vampires, the sons and daughters and slaves of the beast. From behind the broken mirrors and the faded oil paintings they would come, silent, with their cold smiles and white faces and terrible eyes. Some of them were Joshua’s friends and one bore his child but Marsh knew with a deadly certainty that it would make no difference. They belonged to the beast. Joshua had the words and the justice and the dream, but the beast had the power, and it would call out to the beasts that lived in all the others, it would wake their red thirst and bend them to its will. It had no thirst itself, but it remembered.

And when those doors began to open, Abner Marsh would die. Damon Julian had talked of sparing him, but the beast was not bound by Julian’s fool promises, it knew how dangerous Marsh was. Ugly or not, Marsh would feed them tonight. And Joshua would die as well, or—worse—become like them. And his child would grow into another beast, and the killing would go on and on, the red thirst would flow down the centuries unquenched, the fever dreams would turn to sickness and to rot.

How could it end any other way? The beast was greater than they were, a force of nature. The beast was like the river, eternal. It had no doubts, no thoughts, no dreams or plans. Joshua York might overwhelm Damon Julian, but when Julian fell the beast lay beneath: alive, implacable, strong. Joshua had drugged his own beast, had tamed it to his will, so he had only humanity to face the beast that lived in Julian. And humanity was not enough. He could not hope to win.

Abner Marsh frowned. Something in his thoughts nagged at him. He tried to figure out what it was, but it wriggled free of him. His arm throbbed. He wished he had some of Joshua’s goddamned drink. It tasted like hell, but Joshua had said once it had laudanum in it, and that would help the pain. The alcohol wouldn’t hurt none, neither.

The angle of the light pouring in through the shot-out skylight had changed. It was afternoon, Marsh figured. Afternoon and getting later. They would have a few hours more. Then the doors would start to open. He looked at Julian, at the shotgun. He squeezed his arm, as if that could lessen the pain somehow. What the hell was he thinking about? About wanting some of Joshua’s damn drink for his arm . . . no, about the beast, about how Joshua couldn’t never beat it, on account . . .

Abner Marsh’s eyes narrowed, and he looked over to Joshua. He
had
beat him, Marsh thought. Once, he beat him once, beast or no. Why can’t he do it again? Why? Marsh clutched at his arm, rocked slowly back and forth, and tried to drive off the pain so he could think clearer. Why, why, why?

And it came to him, like such things always did. Maybe he was slow, but Abner Marsh never forgot. It came to him. The drink, he thought. He could see how it had been. He’d poured the last of it down Joshua’s damned gullet when he passed out in the sun. The final drop fell on his boot and he threw the bottle in the river. Joshua had left hours later, and it had taken him . . . how long? . . . days, it had taken him
days
to get back to the
Fevre Dream
. He’d been running, running to his damn bottles, running from the red thirst. Then he found the steamer, and all the dead, and started ripping loose them boards, and Julian had come . . . Marsh remembered Joshua’s own words . . .
I was screaming at him, screaming incoherently. I wanted vengeance. I wanted to kill him as badly as I have ever wanted to kill anyone, wanted to rip open that pale throat of his, and taste his damnable blood! My anger
. . . No, thought Marsh, not just anger. Thirst. Joshua had been so mad he never even knew it, but he was in the first stage of the red thirst! He must have had a glass of his drink as soon as Julian stole off, so he never realized what it was, why that time had been different.

Marsh got a real cold feeling right then, wondering if Joshua had known the real reason he was ripping free those boards, wondering what would have happened if Julian hadn’t intervened. No wonder Joshua had won then, and never again. His burns, his fears, the carnage all around him, no drinks for days . . . it
had
to have been the thirst. His beast was awake that night, and stronger than Julian’s.

Briefly Abner Marsh was gripped by a great excitement. Then, rapidly, it dawned on him that his wild hope was misplaced. Maybe he had figured something out, but it wasn’t doing them a goddamned bit of good. Joshua had taken a good supply of his drink on this last escape of his. He’d drunk a half-bottle in New Orleans before they set out for Julian’s plantation. Marsh couldn’t see no way to wake the fever in Joshua, the fever that was their only chance . . . his eyes went back to the shotgun, the damned useless shotgun. “Hell,” he muttered. Forget the shotgun, he told himself, it ain’t no good to you, think, think like Mister Jeffers would have, figure something out. Like in a steamboat race, Marsh thought. You couldn’t just run her straight out against another fast boat, you had to be smart, you had to get a lightnin’ pilot who knew all the cutoffs and how to shave them close, and maybe you bought up all the beech so the other boat couldn’t get nothing but cottonwood, or maybe you had some lard in reserve. Tricks!

Marsh scowled and tugged at his whiskers with his good hand. He couldn’t do nothing, he knew. It was up to Joshua. Only Joshua was burning up, Joshua was getting weaker by the minute, and he wasn’t going to move so long as Marsh’s life was at stake. If only there was some way to get Joshua moving . . . to wake the thirst . . . somehow. How did it come now? Every month, something like that, except it didn’t come at all when you used the bottle. Wasn’t there something else? Something else that might bring on the thirst? Marsh thought there might be, but he couldn’t think of it. Maybe anger had something to do with it, but it wasn’t enough. Beauty? Real beautiful things tempted him, even with his drink. He probably picked me as his partner cause they told him I was the ugliest man on the goddamned river, Marsh thought. But it still wasn’t enough. Damned Damon Julian was pretty enough, and he got Joshua awful angry, but Joshua still lost, always lost, the drink made it so, it had to be . . . Marsh began to think back on all the stories that Joshua had ever told him, all the dark nights, the deaths, the terrible bitter times when his thirst had taken hold of him body and soul.

. . . caught me in the stomach, square,
said Joshua,
and I bled badly . . . I got up. I must have been a terrible sight, pale-faced and covered with blood. And a strange feeling was on me . . .
Julian was sipping at his wine, smiling, saying
Did you truly fear I would harm you that night in August? Oh, perhaps I would have, in my pain and rage. But not before . . .
Marsh saw his face, twisted and bestial, as he pulled Jeffers’s sword cane from his body . . . he remembered Valerie, burning, dying in the yawl, remembered the way she had screamed and gone for Karl Framm’s throat . . . he heard Joshua talking, saying
the man hit me again, and I lashed out backhanded at him . . . he was on me again . . .