Of Masques and Martyrs (6 page)

Allison was staring at him.

“Hey,” she said, bringing his fingers up to brush them against her own cheek. He looked at her, smiled again, and breathed deeply of the Nebraska air.

“If I’d known you were going to get all sad on me, I never would have agreed to come out here with you,” she said. “I know that was just a name for you, like an actor on a stage, but it’s still a part of your life.”

“Not anymore it’s not,” he said without rancor. “Buffalo Bill never really existed, but this place was where Will Cody lived. There were moments out here, in this little town, with so many people who loved me and so many of nature’s gifts to man, moments that were so close to perfect that if one more little girl with a ribbon in her hair had smiled at me, or one more young man had told me his little boy wanted to be a great scout . . . well, God would’ve had to bring me home to heaven right then, because nobody deserves to be that happy on Earth.”

When he looked at her again, Allison was biting her lip and her smile was gone, replaced by a frown of sadness and sympathy. She pulled him to her with one hand, and, in unison, they held their coffee cups out to either side to keep them from spilling.

Her chin on his shoulder, she whispered to him, “Every time I think I understand you, you surprise me a little more. Crass as can be one minute, the soul of eloquence the next. They don’t make men like you anymore, Colonel. They truly don’t.”

Will smiled to himself. “I love you, Allison,” he said.

They kissed then, and when she returned his profession of love, her words were muffled by the joining of their lips. When they looked up again, the sun had almost cleared the horizon, and the temperature had risen several degrees.

As Will sipped his coffee again, Allison said, “This is harder for you than you expected, isn’t it? We can go anytime you want, you know.”

“Yes, much harder,” he answered. “And we’ll go soon. Let’s just sit a spell, while I try to decide whether I really want to go see the ranch, or even go into North Platte.”

A few minutes later, Will poured Allison the last of the coffee. He’d already decided to drive the Jeep into town, at least to try to get a decent breakfast.

“It’s beautiful out here,” she said. “Really it is. I understand why you loved it so much when . . . before.”

“There are so many memories out here for me. So much I can’t remember, too,” he replied. “Fort McPherson used to be not far from here. It was a different world when I first saw it, when I was stationed there. A different world entirely. No cars, no planes, no television. No fax machines or cell phones or nukes. For better
and
for worse, it was a much simpler life. Just people, trying to get by day to day, with only one another for company.

“The first time I set foot here was in May of 1869. I was guide then to the Fifth Cavalry, and we were on the trail of Tall Bull, a vicious Indian warrior—but no more so than the rest of us. I wasn’t fool enough to want the Indians dead because they were Indians, or because they didn’t pray to God. The finest, most generous, most trustworthy friends I ever had were of Indian blood, and I employed as many as I could, hoping to keep them from wallowing in the sorrow of their lost tribes. But back when I was a scout . . . well, they were the enemy then, and that was all that mattered.

“Still, it was a fine time, when the Fifth rolled into Fort McPherson. I fell in love with it straightaway. My friend Lew had a saloon in town. Bartender there was Texas Jack Omohundro, who’d trailed three thousand head of Longhorn up from El Paso. I think a lot of that McMurtry fella’s writing is influenced by Texas Jack’s exploits as a young man.”

Will laughed then, and smiled widely and warmly for the first time.

“We went to the circus that first stay, too. Dan Costello’s Circus, I recall. Stole a lot of ideas from Dan when I started the Wild West Show. But, then, hell, I stole from them all.”

Allison looked at Will and sipped the last of her coffee. She was worried about him. As hard as she tried to keep her concern from showing, she couldn’t help it. He loved her, she knew that, and because of it she didn’t expect him to do anything rash. But the events of the past few years had taken a horrible toll on him.

When he was still human, Allison knew, Will had been adored by millions around the world. Controversial though his reputation might have been, his charisma was never at issue. After his first death, when he became one of the shadows, he lived in secret even as his celebrity continued to grow. Reluctantly, he joined Karl Von Reinman’s coven and tried to hunt only the worst of humanity. Eventually, he couldn’t do even that, instead taking blood only from willing donors.

After the Venice Jihad, when the world learned that the shadows were real, Cody reveled in his second round of fame and adoration. He tried to re-create at least a part of his great celebrity. Then Hannibal had declared a savage war on humanity, and on any of the immortals who opposed him.

For the first time in his life, the world turned against Will Cody. He was reviled instead of applauded. It had been that way for more than a year now, and Allison had come to believe firmly that it was killing him, destroying her lover as surely as some horrid disease.

Hannibal’s betrayal had not only changed the world, but it had changed them all individually as well. Allison had abandoned her life as a broadcast journalist to disappear into the shadow of America. The world knew her lover was a vampire, of course. So Hannibal had destroyed her life as well. Living in fear changed her priorities, that was for certain.

Her generation had never known what war really meant. But Allison knew now. War was living, squeezing life from every second.

Will had become more serious, more intense, over the past year. That had been the whole purpose of this trip, to relax, to forget Hannibal, at least for a little while. They’d reasoned that in places like North Platte and Cedar Mountain, there wouldn’t be any shadows, nor any vampires. Except Will.

It had helped some. But not enough. Allison still felt as though her presence was the only thing that could make Will happy. That was a lot of responsibility for a woman in any relationship, but living on the run, in the middle of a guerilla war, it was even harder. The hardest part was not becoming just as dependent on him as he was on her. It might already be too late, she thought. Nothing mattered to her the way Will did. Allison didn’t know what she would do without him.

Then there was Peter. She didn’t know if it was his new familiarity with sorcery, or the unfathomable time he had spent away from anyone who cared for him, but Octavian had set himself at a distance from everyone. He still had a certain nobility and charm, but his warmth seemed to have disappeared. Except with George Marcopoulos, the aged human doctor who had been Peter’s friend through it all.

“You ready?” Will asked, his fingers lightly running through her hair. She wore it cut fashionably shorter now, at shoulder length.

“So we get breakfast after all?” she asked with a smile.

“I suppose you deserve it,” Will replied archly.

“Suppose?” Allison cried, feigning insult. “You wound me, sir.”

Will leaned in and kissed her then. For a long moment after, he rested his forehead against hers. Then he sighed and withdrew, eyes closed a moment and with a tiny smirk on his face. Allison began to reach behind his head to pull him close for another kiss, but Will waggled a finger in front of her eyes.

“Now, now, young lady,” he said sternly. “Let’s not start that again, or we’ll be out here all morning.”

Allison laughed, summoned up her strength, and with one mighty shove pushed Will off the hood of the Jeep. With the speed that was a trademark of his kind, he could easily have turned and landed on his feet. Instead he offered her a look of mock hurt and despair and plummeted to the hard-packed dirt road with a grunt.

“Come on, old man,” Allison said as she slid off the hood. “I’m getting hungry.”

As she opened the passenger door, she saw Will pop up just beyond the Jeep, chuckling to himself. Sweet relief washed over her. For once, he was relaxed. He’d forgotten his troubles, just for a moment.

Inside the Jeep, the cellular phone trilled. Allison frowned and looked down at it. When she looked back up at Will, the smile had vanished from his face. At the third ring, he started for the driver’s door.

“Peter knows this is supposed to be a vacation, right?” Allison asked, forcing levity into her voice.

Will shot her a glance that she read all too easily. Peter Octavian was the only person with their cell phone number. He knew how important this trip was to both of them. If he was calling now, it could only be bad news.

He reached for the phone and flipped it open; Allison watched his eyes as he said, “Cody.” After a few seconds, Will winced and began to grimace, and Allison began to gnaw her lip and rock a bit, almost unconsciously, as she wondered what had prompted the call.

“We’re on our way now,” Will said, and slapped the cell phone shut before dropping it on the console between the front seats.

He hung his head, and Allison just waited. Finally, Cody looked up at her.

“Rolf and Erika were in New York trying to track Hannibal. They were supposed to check in last night but nobody’s heard from them,” Will explained.

Allison let that sink in for a moment. Will seemed so angry, so anxious, she wanted to assuage his fears. Erika they didn’t know all that well, but Rolf was a blood-brother to both Will and Peter—they shared the same vampiric father—and meant a great deal to both of them. To the entire coven, actually.

“Well, he’s alive, anyway,” she said. “If the worst had happened, you and Peter would both have felt his passing.”

Will wouldn’t look her in the eye.

“What?” she asked. “You didn’t feel anything, did you?”

He shook his head, and when he looked up, there were tiny tears of blood on Will Cody’s face.

“No,” he replied. “But I reached out for him just now—Peter’s already tried—just to check and make certain he’s all right. See if he needed help. And there’s nothing there, Alli. Nothing.”

“How . . . how can that be?” she asked, horrified.

“I don’t know,” he growled, and slapped his right palm on the side of the Jeep. “I can’t even guess what it means, because my only guess is that he’s dead and somehow we couldn’t hear him. But I’ll tell you this much, I’m going to find out.”

“We’re
going to find out,” she said. “I’m going to New York with you.”

Will nodded slightly, then looked up at her.

“Get in.”

 

Nikki swam, disoriented, through unconsciousness. Just above the surface, she could hear garbled, fluid voices. She swam toward them as if toward the sunlight streaming down through the waves. When her eyes flickered open in the dimly lit room, her mouth felt parched and she couldn’t focus her vision.

“. . . drugged . . .” she managed to say.

She was startled when the face of a white-haired old man burst into her line of sight. Nikki blinked several times, then realized the old man was speaking to her. His voice seemed familiar, though she didn’t recognize him, and she wondered how long she’d been unconscious.

“Ah, you’re finally awake. You’ll feel better in a moment,” he promised. “Your arm will heal nicely, by the way. It wasn’t even a full break.”

The old man went on like that for a bit. It took her clouded mind a moment to realize he was a doctor.

“How . . . how long have I been out?” she asked, voice hoarse from disuse.

“Just since last night,” the doctor said. “Perhaps twelve hours or so, but that was partially because of the medication. You’re going to be just fine, Miss Wydra. Really.”

She nodded slightly. Then, belatedly, Nikki noticed how odd her surroundings were. She lay in a king-size cherry-wood sleigh bed, in a room with little decoration—yet enough to show that it was unlike any hospital room she’d ever seen.

“Is this—” she began, then had to clear her dry throat. “Is this a hospital?”

The doctor smiled. If he was a doctor. He shook his head slowly.

“No, miss,” he said kindly. “Peter was concerned about your safety at a hospital. That’s why he brought you here to the convent.”

Convent?
Nikki was about to ask for clarification, but she didn’t get the chance.

“That’s enough, George,” a low, commanding voice said from the doorway.

Nikki turned to see the man—Peter?—who had saved her life the night before. He stood at the threshold of the room, his hair and goatee well groomed, his smile white and wide. Handsome and intelligent and soft-spoken and kind in a way that so few men were. Those were all her impressions of him from the night before, from the minutes before the . . . attack, and from the chaos itself.

She didn’t smile back, though. Instead, Nikki shivered and turned away, pulling herself up into a fetal position. Her heart raced the way it had when she was a little girl afraid of the dark. The sun shone warmly through the window of the bedroom. She wondered if it was his bedroom, and closed her eyes against the light.