White Fangs (20 page)

Jack uttered a sound that was half laugh and half sigh, then turned to Ghost and Callie. "Are you ready?"

Ghost was breathing deeply, sniffing the air, and Jack wondered for the first time whether it had been the vampires' scent he had been tracking or Lesya's.

A low growl escaped Ghost's lips. Jack didn't think he was even aware of it. When he spoke, he revealed the sharpness of his teeth. "Let's go."

Jack had been wearing the shotgun strapped across his back. Now he slid it off and cradled it in his hands. Sabine had no weapons, but the air around her seemed to crackle with electricity. Whatever strength remained in her, she would use it. She drew a long knife that Callie had given her, but Jack wished that he still had the silver blade from his time on the
Larsen
. He would rather she carried that. If she hadn't demurred, he would have given her the shotgun, but she'd insisted that he could do more damage with it than she could.

The Reverend unpacked the lamp, tipped oil from a small bottle, and lit it. He turned the knob, dimming the light to a soft glow. They needed to be able to see in the cave, but didn't want to announce themselves any more brightly than necessary. When the Reverend was done, he stood and handed the lamp to Callie, even as Louis got to work unpacking the dynamite from his leather pack.

"Boys," Callie said, glancing at Louis and the Reverend, "ain't no way for us to know how ugly it's gonna get in there. If we come runnin', you'd best be ready to light the fuse and blow the hell outta that cave."

"We'll go as fast as we can," Louis promised.

"See you do," Ghost growled.

Jack took a long breath, and then led the way around the corner and across the open ground toward the cave. He didn't exhale till he reached the entrance.

He slipped quietly into the dark, where evil waited in breathless silence.

The stench of rotting meat wafted from the depths of the cave, growing stronger as they moved deeper. Jack had led the way at first, but as the darkness encroached he let Callie slip in front of him, the lamp held high in her left hand to light the way. In her right she held a gun, but Jack figured if they had to fight their way out of the limestone cave, they were as good as dead. He peered into the shadows, dismayed that the light didn't reach further. The lamp shone brightly enough, reflecting off of the sheer walls of the cave, but somehow its illumination never touched the blackest corners or stretched very far ahead.

Ghost brought up the rear. Once upon a time, Jack would never have turned his back on Ghost, but their fates had become more intertwined than ever. They might have been opposite sides of a mirror — dark and light reflections of one another — but if the mirror shattered, it would be the end of them both.

They moved in silence, though Jack felt sure that if they were awake, the vampires would hear even the lightest footfall.

And the leeches would smell them.

Chilled to distraction by the thought, he almost collided with Callie as she stopped short, holding the lamp up to the cave wall. When he saw what the light revealed, all other thoughts were driven from Jack's head. He didn't know enough about the inland Tlingit tribes to know if their ancestors had used cave paintings to record their history, but that was precisely what they were looking at now.

Not the Tlingits' history, however.

The vampires'.

They had moved perhaps sixty feet into the gently sloping cave, the foul meat stink growing stronger than ever. They were far enough inside the cliff now that they had left the reach of the sun far behind, and here was what Jack imagined to be the true entrance to the vampires' lair. The walls on both sides were painted with images that bridged the gap between pride and horror — figures on horseback, men fighting with knives, huge white bears tearing a human figure apart, a large man holding a woman in the air above him and drinking her blood as it poured from a wound in her chest. And more. So many more.

The images were crudely drawn in a brownish tint that flaked at the touch — the vampires had used blood to tell their story. Callie moved the lamp around too quickly for Jack to get more than flashes of most of the hideous images, but he noted the presence of animals other than the bears. This would not have troubled him save for one rudimentary painting that showed a hawk tearing at the face of a man on horseback. He wondered about that hawk, and what it meant. He didn't like the implications.

If the vampires could
fly
after them . . .

Louis
, he thought,
you and the Reverend better be ready with that dynamite
.

Sabine touched the small of his back. He relished the contact, but also got the message. Tapping Callie, he gestured for her to move along. She might like to learn more about the vampires — they were her prey, after all — but outside the cave the precious hours of daylight were dwindling. Jack figured they had two and a half hours before sunset.

Something shifted in the darkness behind them and Sabine and Jack turned, guns at the ready, only to see Ghost's golden eyes reflecting back the lamplight. Somehow, though he maintained his human guise, in the quiet closeness of the dark cave he seemed more like a monster than ever. Jack was glad to have this monster on his side.

Callie lost her footing. Without a free hand to catch herself, she went down on her knees on the jagged limestone floor. Jack heard a muffled grunt and watched as she hung her head, fighting back the pain. He took her arm and helped her up, thinking what a miracle it had been that she hadn't reached for purchase and accidentally shattered the lamp against the wall. If the vampires had been awakened by the noise, Ghost was the only one who might have a chance of making it out.

"Son of a bitch," Ghost whispered.

Jack swung around to glare at him for breaking the silence of the cave, but then he saw the fear in Ghost's eyes at the same time he heard Sabine make the smallest of sounds in her throat. He turned back in time to see Callie lowering the lamp to illuminate her trouser legs, and the dark patch of blood blooming on one knee.

Determined, sure now that their fate — whatever it might be — was already written, Jack took the lamp from Callie and handed it to Sabine, so that Callie could draw her other pistol. He hated putting Sabine in the lead, but there was nothing else to be done.

Sabine did not hesitate. They moved forward, less worried about being quiet than before. If the scent of Callie's blood did not rouse the vampires, the scuffle of a boot certainly would not. Another twenty-five feet ahead they came to a fork in the cave, but a bit of exploration revealed that the left path led nowhere, and when they retreated and started along the right-hand path, the smell of dead things grew stronger. Another half dozen steps, and they found the first vampire.

It lay curled in a fetal position against one wall of the cave, leaving just enough room for them to step past. The Tlingit man was as still as death, but there was a potential about his pose that promised pain and darkness.

Jack shuddered, a profound dread clutching at him. He had been so focused on the moment, on every step and the silence around him, that he had shut out the awful weight of malice in the air. His senses were recoiling from the presence not just of this creature, but of others sleeping deeper. Now that he had allowed himself to feel it, the repulsive taint of evil that filled the caves dragged at him.

Sabine started to make her way around the sleeping vampire. Gripping the shotgun tightly, Jack followed.

A minute or so later they began a steeper descent along an even more jagged path, and the cave began to widen. The stillness made Jack want to scream just to break the silence. Picking his steps carefully, he peered into the dark corners. The cave broadened so much that the lamp's weak light barely reached the walls, and yet Sabine picked up her pace. Jack knew that her sense of Lesya's presence must have grown stronger.

The ceiling rose out of sight as they entered the vast cavern. Darkness crushed down on them, its weight palpable, and the horrors it hid exuding dreadful menace. Sabine paused and lifted the lamp higher, trying to angle the light, and Jack stiffened when he saw the glint of white fur.

All around the cavern.

Jack blinked and took a step back, bumping into Callie as he frantically tried to count the motionless, unbreathing polar bears sprawled on the floor, on ledges, and in corners. There were dozens —
dozens! —
and other vampires besides. Some of the dead things had been wearing the faces of men when the sun came up and pushed them into this bizarre dormancy. There were other animals, too. All told, there must have been forty or fifty of them.

There were also corpses. They ranged in stages of decomposition from days old to leathery decay, and they were the source of the stench.

Sabine took a few steps forward, lamp held up. Some of the vampires still had their eyes open, but they stared dull and lifeless, unseeing. For just a moment, Jack wondered what the hell he had been thinking, coming here . . . wondered if Sabine had enchanted him in some way far more profound than how Lesya had used magic to manipulate him. Then he saw the profile of the woman he loved, the exhaustion and fear in her expression — and the hope as well — and felt ashamed.

Angry with himself, he started forward, passing Sabine, searching for a path through the vampires and their victims. When he heard movement ahead, a kind of scratching noise, he froze again. If the vampires were truly dormant there should be only one reason for sounds coming from ahead of them. Jack turned to Sabine and beckoned for her to hurry with the lamp, and when she reached him and held it up, they found the source of the strange sound.

The slender, nude female figure lying at the center of the cavern looked like nothing human. Surrounded by a quartet of pale Tlingits who would return to dark life the moment night fell, she seemed for a moment to have been carved from wood and decorated with vines and leaves. But Jack knew better. The bark-like patterns on her skin, and the small shoots, leaves and flower blossoms on her flesh, were no fanciful ornamentations. Nor were the vines that had grown from her arms and legs and belly mere artful fakery.

This was Lesya, daughter of the spirit of the wood. If Sabine was a sea witch, Lesya was surely some sort of forest witch. In her own forest, where her power was greatest, she maintained an illusion of humanity, but away from that center of power she could not hide her true appearance entirely. And the vampires had been feeding on her, drawing her power for themselves.

One of them had his cheek laid across the meat of her calf, puncture wounds showing clearly that he had been drinking of her blood when sunrise had pushed him into hibernation for the day.

Jack
, Sabine whispered, but her voice was in his head. He turned to see that she had begun to weep, her face filled with both longing and empathy.

He glanced at Ghost, gestured with the shotgun, and together they picked their way around the dead and the undead, careful not to crack bones beneath their boots, moving as fast as caution would allow. So focused and wary was he that he was almost upon Lesya when he saw that her eyes were wide open. She was staring at him in silence, pleading for rescue.

Jack aimed the shotgun directly at the heart of the vampire who lay across Lesya's leg. Ghost knelt to examine the vines that had sprouted from her prone form and saw they were stuck to the floor of the cavern, wound in amongst bones and the vampires' rotting victims. He shot Jack a questioning glance, and with a nod Jack urged him to action. They were running out of time.

All around them, the vampires remained motionless, not so much as the twitch of a finger or the ruffle of polar bear fur to indicate that they were anything other than eternally dead.

Ghost hesitated. Jack watched his nostrils flare and lips peel back in a silent, fang-baring snarl as he prepared himself to act. Then the once-pirate slid his hands beneath Lesya and lifted her, gently at first, and then with more force, tearing and snapping vines whose motion disturbed bones and skulls with a dry, chuckling clatter.

Callie swore beneath her breath, moving in a circle, pistols at the ready. Ghost rose behind her with Lesya splayed across his huge arms, and he stared down at the strange creature they had come to rescue. Jack could not make out the look in his eyes.

As Sabine held the lamp high and Ghost started back through the cavern, Jack began to smile. This was going to work.

They hurried back the way they had come, less concerned now about the noise of their footfalls. Jack's heart thundered in his chest and his hands were gripped so tightly around the shotgun that his knuckles hurt, but still a kind of elation began to rise in him. If Louis and the Reverend had done their job correctly, they would blow the entrance to the tunnel and trap the vampires inside. Even if the monsters could dig their way out, it would take hours at the very least. By then they would be back in Lesya's forest, where her power and strength would be restored. It might even be morning by then, and they would have bought themselves an entire day to get back to Dawson and begin to prepare the people there to take their fight to the vampires.

These thoughts filled his head as he rushed through the narrowing cave, watching his footing as best he could in the shadows and the lamplight. Callie was right in front of him, Sabine ahead of her, and Ghost led the way with Lesya in his arms. He caught a glimpse of her in the jumping light, saw her weakly raise a hand to trace sharp branch-fingers along Ghost's cheek.

That touch distracted Ghost. It was the only explanation Jack could imagine for what happened next. Ghost stumbled over the vampire they had first passed on the way in, a heavy boot slamming into the undead Tlingit's side. He lurched forward, twisted as he fell in order to protect Lesya, and crashed to the cave floor.

Sabine froze, with Callie and Jack behind her. She held the light up, and all of them watched as the vampire began to stir.

No, no, no
, Jack thought. They'd come so far!