LITMIR.BIZ

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from an unladylike snort. She did manage to suppress the sound to a barely audible sniff.

      She didn’t like Lisette Annalise. She was sure that the woman would happily propel enough bombs to obliterate the entire South, heedless that it would kill countless innocents and take out half the Northern troops, all in her determination to exterminate her enemies. Did Cole realize that? she wondered. It hadn’t taken any great intellectual mind to realize that the woman was a Northern spy, working with the Pinkertons. Though Cody had not told her so directly during Cole’s absence, he hadn’t denied her query about the woman, either.

      A soldier suddenly barred their way. “What business have you here?” the man demanded. “If you’re seeking the body of your kin, you’ve passed the tent where the latest casualties lie.”

      “I’m here under a matter of government concern,” Cody said, and Cole produced their letter of authority.

      The soldier nodded, looking a little white. “Dr. Mansfield examined the bodies earlier. I shall conduct you and remain with you throughout your own examination, sir.”

      Megan knew that her part in the charade was at hand.

      “Oh!” she whispered suddenly.

      Making sure that she was far enough from the men, she brought the back of her hand to her eyes and pretended to waver.

      “Miss!” the soldier cried, rushing forward to catch her before she could fall.

      “Oh, thank you!” she cried, circling her arms around him. “I don’t know what’s come over me! I’ve nursed men on the fields…. I just need…perhaps a bit of water.”

      “My poor dear sister!” Cody said, starting forward.

      Cole caught him by the shoulder. “Dr. Fox, we’ve been asked to make a report as soon as possible on the condition of the poor family!”

      “Indeed,” Cody said, distressed.

      “I have the young lady,” the soldier said, now staring at Megan with something like puppy love in his eyes. “Be brief, please. I am ordered to watch over the corpses—God knows why. They are certainly not going to rise and fight the Union. And who would seek to steal a corpse—and besides there are thousands on the battlefields. There are sons in the family, but they are in the field. Oh, just hurry, sir, and do what examining it is that is necessary. I will see to the young lady. My officer’s tent is just there….” He pointed.

      “Oh!” Megan said again, clinging to him.

      “Dear girl! Dear girl!” he said. And barely aware of the others, he helped her as she leaned hard against him, and they walked to the officer’s tent. She glanced back over her shoulder just once, smiling at the trio of men. She noticed Cole looking back at her, appearing amused.

      THE OBVIOUS FACTOR regarding the corpses was their color.

      Or lack thereof.

      “White” was the term used, and yet they weren’t really white at all. They appeared to be a pale, opaque shade of yellow-pearl, and they seemed hollow, as if they had never been human at all.

      Cole noted immediately that in addition to the massive trauma apparent on their necks, their throats had been neatly slit as well, though long after the blood had been drained. The perpetrators had been savage, making no tiny pinprick point in the throats of their victims, but tearing at them like rabid dogs. Young vampires, yes. And maybe an older one, hastily trying to cover their tracks.

      Cody looked at the victims, laid out on the ground, covered in poor, unbleached cotton sheets, bearing the muddy look of the ground where they lay.

      Cots would have been saved for the living.

      Joshua Brandt had been a man of perhaps fifty or sixty years; even in death, he had a furrowed brow. His wife was thin, probably pale in life as well, her face portraying the wrinkled countenance of a life that had been long lived. Brandt’s mother was long, excruciatingly thin, and probably soon for death even without the vampire’s kiss. The servant girl was young and had been pretty; her hands were callused. There had been a male servant as well, an older man, bearing signs of stooped shoulders from a long life of labor. The bodies had only received cursory inspections and thus remained fully clothed.

      “The heads, or stakes?” Cole asked Cody with sadness in his voice.

      “Stakes, beneath the shirts and bodices,” Cody said.

      Cole hunkered down and reached into his coat for a long, narrow, honed stake and his mallet. He paused before looking down then discovered that he was poised above the body of the young servant girl. She looked peaceful, young and lovely.

      To his surprise, her eyes opened. She looked at him and smiled, and he paused again. Then he saw that something in her eyes was registering cunning and evil intent.

      He hammered the stake into her heart just as her lips drew back and saliva dripped off her fangs. He sat back, trembling slightly. She had changed quickly. And in daylight.

      Cody had already dispatched Joshua Brandt and his mother; Brendan had made a quick, clean disposal of Mrs. Brandt. They both looked at him without words.

      We all know that you never hesitate, their silent glances seemed to say.

      And, yes, he knew. But he also knew that in Victory, Texas, they had let some of the changed retain their strange new existences. But they knew those they had allowed this for. It might have been possible that someone as young as this girl would awaken and search for a way to appease her hunger without attacking humans, but that would have been an amazing rarity.

      He nodded, and though he felt tremendous pain again, he pulled down on the worn shirt of the older male servant and made quick work with his stake and mallet. A slight shudder seemed to escape the man.

      There was no blood.

      Cole pulled the man’s shirt back into position.

      They had completed their task.

      The three of them rose, carefully seeing that the dead were covered again in their poor shrouds, and left them in peace. They headed for the helpful officer’s tent. Orderlies, nurses, doctors and civilians who had come to see what comfort and aid they could possibly give patients were hurrying about in different directions bearing water, medical bags, alcohol, bandages and surgical instruments. As they walked, despite the stream of humanity, Cole heard someone crying out pathetically for help. He found himself pausing despite himself and the mission that still lay before them.

      “Go on,” Cody said. “We’ll get Megan.”

      He followed the sound of the cries. They were coming from a tent that must have held at least thirty cots. There were four nurses or attendants, but they were all moving as quickly as possible. Men lay about in bloody bandages. Some had stumps for legs. Some were covered with sheets that quickly soaked blood from wounds that refused to completely mend.

      He heard the cry again and passed by a wounded soldier who did nothing but stare blankly ahead. And then he found the victim crying so pitiably.

      He looked about for a makeshift camp table and found a pitcher of water and a glass, poured some from the first to the latter and came down on one knee by the soldier’s cot. He noted the man was still in uniform, a strange one at that.

      “Where are you wounded, sir?” Cole asked, moving to lift the man’s head.

      The fellow’s eyes took on a strange light. He smiled suddenly.

      And opened his mouth.

      Cole had never moved so quickly in his life, reaching into his coat, finding a stake. He couldn’t bother with the mallet but had to depend upon his own strength and positioning between the ribs.

      He laid himself hard against the man, trying to hide his deed with the mass of his shoulders and back.

      The man’s jaw locked in an open position. The eyes glazed slowly. The fangs retracted even more so.

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