White Fangs (13 page)

Kikono smiled at the absurdity of that. "Why are you here?"

"A lot of people died around us last night," Jack said. "The things that killed them looked like polar bears. One of 'em lost its head, and then it looked like a man. A friend of ours calls them vampires. The sheriff says you know what they really are."

Kikono sniffed and nodded. "I have heard the word 'vampire.' It is as good a word as any. They are old spirits. Evil. They slip through the cracks in the world and prey on the people. The blood spirits find a way into the people as they do into the world, and they wear the bodies of the people like shirts, but they are not the people. Once many Tlingit were bitten by them . . . taken. For many years, they were kept at bay, eaten or killed or driven into hiding in the stones of the earth by their fear of a greater evil, a man cursed to be a monster."

A knot of ice formed in Jack's gut. He heard Ghost grunt and glanced over to see that the huge pirate had become more alert, head slightly cocked, eyes peering incisively at Kikono.

"The Wendigo," Ghost said. "You're talking about the Wendigo. It kept them away from this area?"

Jack held his breath.

"Yes," the old Tlingit said, dark wisdom and sadness in his eyes. "The Wendigo. The cursed man. It killed many men and women and children itself, of course. It kept mostly to its own territory, but now it is gone. The blood spirits — what you call vampires — they know only hunger. Now they have the freedom to kill as many as they can, feeding on the blood of some and tearing out the spirits of others to make them hollow . . . to make room for more of their kind to come into our world."

A terrible weight rested on Jack's shoulders. His stomach twisted in revulsion. He had killed the Wendigo himself, destroying a monster . . . only to make way for an even greater evil to spread its wings.

Ghost must have read his mind. The former pirate captain clapped him on the shoulder. "You know what they say, Mr. London. Nature abhors a vacuum."

If he'd had one of Callie's guns in that moment, loaded with silver bullets, Jack might happily have shot Ghost Nilsson dead. Instead, all he could do was turn away from the grinning pirate and stride from the cell, and then from the jail.

It seemed there were always more monsters to kill.

Every time I bathe, it's to wash away the memory of monsters.

Jack sat in his iron bath, in his hotel room, in the haunted town where his experience of monsters had begun. The Dawson Hotel had burned down six months previously, Hal had told him, and he was glad. It had been there that the slave drivers had captured him and his friend Merritt, and mortally wounded their friend Jim. Human monsters, true, but they had been so affected by the savagery of this land that Jack wondered whether they had been a little more — or a little less — than human. From them to Lesya and the Wendigo, and after that, his long sea journey with werewolves.

And Ghost. The most human of beasts, but perhaps the greatest monster of all.

"Because he's intelligent," Jack whispered. His voice sounded loaded and heavy, breaking the silence of his room with deep pronouncements. "Because he's a monster with aims beyond tending his hunger, and his base needs." Ironically, it was Ghost's humanness that gave that monster the possibility of change.

Jack sighed, letting the muck and filth of their journey soak away from his skin. He washed and laid back, eyelids drooping even though it was daylight outside. He could have slept forever . . . Close his eyes and let reality bleed away, welcome in dreams of home and family and those rough, innocent years he had spent as a child trying to be a man — stealing oysters, working in the tannery, riding the railroad . . . Travelling many miles in search of himself, when he was always close at hand.

With adulthood and adventure had come real responsibility. Jack sighed as the guilt washed in again. In what had been the greatest fight of his life, he had killed the Wendigo. It had been an inevitable confrontation, and it was only afterward that he had considered the ramifications of what he had done. In slaying the beast, he had ended its wretched hunger, and freed the region of its unnatural stain. How many men, women, and children had he saved, who would otherwise have fallen victim to its urges? He could not count, nor would he ever know. He had sailed away from the Yukon content in his actions, even pleased that the Wendigo itself could at last find peace. He had not for one moment guessed that the Wendigo's death would have doomed so many more to something
worse
than death, if what Kikono said was true. And Jack had no reason to doubt the old Tlingit.

The guilt was a cool seam through his soul, though he was sure no one would condemn him. Ghost's reaction to the scenario only served to anger Jack more. As they had walked back toward the hotel together, pausing at the store to collect Sabine, Ghost's constant chuckling had set Jack's nerves on edge. Sabine had asked what was wrong, but Jack had waved her away. It was not something he could bear to discuss in Ghost's presence, not when the big pirate would only revel in Jack's predicament. He would see it as a weakness in Jack, whereas Jack viewed his own guilt — consuming and painful though it was — as the greatest mark of his humanity.

"We'll always be so different," he said.

Someone knocked at the door.

Jack climbed from the bath and wrapped himself in a towel. "Who is it?"

"Me." Sabine's voice was low and urgent, and Jack moved to the door to let her in.

She stood in the hall, the vision of every good thing in his life, her smile filled with love and her eyes reflecting his own sadness.

"Ghost told you," Jack said.

Sabine nodded. "I know you're too strong to believe any of this is your fault."

"Really?" Jack asked.

Sabine stared at him, eyes unwavering. "Are you going to ask me in?"

Jack stood back and held the door open, and Sabine entered. She had already bathed — her hair was lose and shimmering in sunlight shining through the window, and he caught a hint of perfumed fragrances.

"I do feel guilt, Sabine," he said, sitting on the bed beside her. "I was a younger man then, in experience more than years. I fought and killed the thing without any thought as to — "

"Don't for a second talk of consequences!" Sabine said sharply. "Vying with Fate is a fool's game, and I won't let you enter into it now, Jack. Not after everything we've been through together, and knowing now what you went through on your own beforehand. The present makes up its own mind, and if you'd known then what you know now, would you have done any different?"

"Of course!"

"Really? Would you? With the beast coming at you, craving the taste of your flesh and bones? And with Lesya chasing behind?"

Lesya.
The mention of her name gave Jack pause, and the solidity of their cause gave him something to hold on to.

"I can't say," Jack finally admitted. "What ifs and maybes are as nebulous as dealing with Fate."

"Sweet Jack," Sabine said, and she leaned forward and held one of his hands in both of hers. "Sometimes I see such weight on your shoulders."

"I manage," he said, smiling.

"You can only do your best," she said. "Your friend Hal knows the truth, yes? Yet I didn't hear any blame in his voice, or see it in the way he treated you. He looks up to you, not down at you. He sees the truth."

Jack nodded.

"You can't fight every monster," Sabine said. s she leaned in close and planted a soft kiss against Jack's cheek, he sat up straighter, eyes wide.

"Not every one, perhaps," he said. He stood and paced to the window, looking out along one of Dawson's rough streets and the rougher people inhabiting it. At the edge of the town he could see several people bustling around one of the watchtowers, and even though it was barely past midday there was already an air of frantic anxiety pervading the place. People rushed instead of strolled. Even the drinkers sitting on a large porch outside a tavern seemed to be drinking quickly, afraid that things would change before they saw the bottoms of their glasses.

"Jack?" Sabine asked.

"What's happening here is linked with my crossing paths with Lesya in the past," Jack said. "Who's to say that won't be the same in the future?"

"I'm not sure I understand."

Jack was energized now, and he dressed quickly, still wet from his bath.

"We're heading back out into the wild to find Lesya," Jack said. "To do that with any degree of safety, and any hope of success, we have to know everything we can about the vampires. I've got a plan." As he strapped on his knife, it crossed his mind that he should try to procure a silver blade before they left Dawson again. "They're a part of what happens next, like it or not. If I get even the slightest of chances, I'll do what I can to kill them all."

"Everything we've done is pointless!" Hal said. "All the defenses I've helped build, the towers and fences and pits. The look-outs in the trees. All of it pointless if they can just . . ." He shook his head and took another drink. Last time Jack had seen Hal, he'd been a young boy not used to liquor.
Another mark of his adulthood,
Jack thought grimly,
brought on too soon.

"Not pointless at all," Callie insisted.

"How the hell d'you figure that?" Hal asked.

Jack could sense a panic rising in Hal. "Callie knows what she's talking about," Jack said.

"One of those things got into Dawson last night!" Hal said. "Past all our best defenses, got in to kill Truman and bite his wife and now she's . . . she's what?"

"She's someone to be visited again," Jack said. He looked around the table at the others, glancing from face to face looking for understanding. In the bustle of the tavern, where dozens of people drank and ate and sang with a barely concealed desperation, their large table stood out as an oasis of calm and contemplation. Sabine was watching him with concern. Louis, Vukovich, and the Reverend nursed their drinks, faces unreadable. Callie was nodding slowly, one hand holding her glass on the table, the other splayed on her thigh. She rarely had both hands far away from her guns or her knife.

Whether or not some of the others understood, it was Ghost who voiced it.

"She's bait," he said. "Bitten, and infected with whatever curse the vampires have. I smelled it on her just as surely as I smelled death on her husband. Now she's waiting to be visited again.
Drunk from."

"And tonight, we'll be there waiting to catch the beast and question it," Jack said.

"Jack . . ." Sabine said warily.

"We need to know," Louis said, nodding sagely. "How many there are, their intentions, their strengths and weaknesses . . . ."

"Weaknesses?" Vukovich asked.

"Every living thing has a weakness, man or monster," Jack said. Ghost chuckled, but no one acknowledged him.

"More than that," The Reverend said, "we need to know where they camp. Where they spend the daylight hours."

"Yes," Jack said. "If everything we've seen, everything we've heard from Dawson, is true, then they only come out at night."

"We've never seen one moving in the sunlight," Hal confirmed. "But the way you're talking here, Jack, sounds like you're planning a war."

"Not at all," Jack said, but he glanced aside, tapping his fingers on the table and realizing that was
exactly
what it sounded like.

"Know your enemy, eh, Jack?" Ghost said.

"Know your enemy," Jack said, nodding, not looking at Ghost. He could feel the big man's infuriating smile. "Our aim remains what it was the moment we started on this journey — Lesya, her secrets, and her possible links to Sabine. The other aims that have come about during the course of the journey . . ." He nodded to Vukovich and the Reverend, smiled at Louis. "Well, that's going well, and I'm pleased to say I've found new friends. But we've lost enough already. So the fewer surprises between us and Lesya, the better."

"It's inhuman," Hal muttered. "Using her as bait. She's lost her husband already, and now you're going to lay in wait for a monster to come and feed from her."

"It ain't inhuman," Callie said.

"Then what is it?" Sabine asked quietly.

"Survival. She ain't human no more, honey." She smiled at Sabine, but it did not touch her eyes. With everything she had likely seen, Jack wondered whether she could ever smile for real anymore. "She ain't as much a monster as them, but gettin' there. Truth be told . . . after we catch the beast, we'd do her a favor to end her own sufferin'."

"You'd murder her?" Hal was aghast.

Callie shrugged. She had no answer for him, because none was needed. Jack could see Hal gradually acknowledge the truth of things, and his respect for the young man grew by the moment.

"So that's it," Jack said. "We'll meet here again in six hours, get ready. Meantime, we've got a journey into the wild to prepare for. We lost everything when the steamer went down, so Hal, I'd sure appreciate it if you could help us restock."

"Dawson's an expensive place nowadays," Hal said, evidently pleased to have something else to discuss. "You got the money?"

"No problem there," Louis said.

"Good," Jack said. He was feeling an urge to move away, retreat to a place where he and Sabine could be alone. He was also sensing that this might be their last chance to do so for quite some time. There were things they had to discuss, and he was concerned for her. Though they were still close to the river, she seemed more strained than ever, her expression one of forced well-being rather than tiredness. He had to ask her how she really was, because the answer might affect their onward journey just as much as whatever they might learn tonight.

Hal stood to leave, glancing back at their table as he stood in the doorway. "So who's with me?" he asked. "I like to spend as much time in the daylight as I can."

The three Wolves went with Hal to restock equipment and supplies for their imminent journey onward. Callie went her own way. Ghost too drifted off, and Jack was pleased to see him go. Hand in hand, he and Sabine walked out into the sunlight and headed along the street, down toward the river. The docks were quieter than he had expected. Few vessels had made it along the river.

"Sabine —" Jack began, but she cut in immediately, squeezing his hand tighter as she spoke.

"Jack, I'm fine," she said. "I'm very tired, and my soul aches because I've never been this far from water. There's the river, yes, but that feels . . . tainted. And a river can't be compared to the sea. That's my real home. I'm afraid, too. Scared that I've come so close to perhaps discovering more about myself than I've ever known, and that we might be stopped at the last minute by those things. Stopped . . . or killed."

"We won't be killed," Jack said, but Sabine waved the comment away as if it had little importance.

"Don't you see what a tragedy that would be?" she asked. "To come so far, and potentially know so much. My history is a storm. I want to see through it, so that everything is clear. To discover that these things are in the way . . ." She sighed heavily, and her fears made Jack realize yet again how different she was from him. Death did not scare her, but losing the chance to discover herself did. That made her somehow purer than him. Whatever she might be — wherever she had come from — truth was more important to her than anything right now.

"I swear they won't stop us," Jack promised. "Look at us! See what we've done! Nothing can get in our way."

"You're so sweet," Sabine said, smiling and pulling him along beside her again. But even as they started walking again, Jack recognized the doubt in her voice. For the first time ever, she had sounded like a wise old woman talking to a child.

In a way, she was.

Jack silently vowed, yet again, that he would do anything for Sabine. She was his life now. Whatever they might face, he would be her truth.

In the end, they agreed upon the simplest plan.

Ghost had wanted to use guns and nets, Vukovich and the others suggested they use their own powers to partially change and attack the vampire at its own level, and Jack and Sabine had contrived a series of signals and diversions that would edge the vampire into a trap. But it was Callie who had silenced them all and settled the final plan.