Night of the Vampires. Heather Graham

my mother had told my father about.”

      Cole laughed. “The name Cody Fox didn’t tell you that?”

      “Fox is a common enough name,” she said.

      Cole still seemed to be wearing a dry half smile. “What happened to Samuel Reeves?” he asked.

      “Nothing. He stayed home from school for a few days—sick. I was punished for the rest of the year—I wasn’t allowed to play with the other children. But, Samuel never teased my friend Sally again. Ever.”

      “And did you bite anyone else? Ever?”

      “Only when I’ve had to—and only in self-defense, and only vampires.”

      “They’re leaving,” Cole said, pointing ahead. Visitors who had been praying at graves were heading for the gates.

      “We’ll have to split up and start walking fast,” Megan said. The ever-so-slightly-civil-almost-tender moment they had shared was gone. He had become all business. She could certainly do the same. “Look for disturbed earth.”

      “I know what I’m doing. You head easterly, and I’ll go west. Try to keep visual contact with me.”

      “Of course. I won’t let you get hurt,” she promised sweetly.

      “You’re Cody’s sister. I’ll look after you,” he responded over his shoulder.

      “As you like, cowboy,” she said lightly, aware that her teasing response was patronizing but unable to help herself from making the statement. She didn’t want anyone getting hurt looking after her; she was what she was.

      She was alarmed to realize that the day was quickly waning. And it was disheartening to know that they had fought so hard the day before—and that at least one of the creatures had escaped.

      She could see Cole at a distance, long strides taking him swiftly across the cemetery. She saw when he paused and reached into his coat for one of his slender honed stakes, then switched it backward to dig in the ground.

      She waited to see if he had made a discovery.

      He had.

      She watched as he swiftly found the mallet in his inner coat pocket, and slammed the stake downward, honed side first. He drew out his bowie knife and she turned her head.

      It seemed that he was quite competent at what he did. He was seeing to it that for certain the creature would not come back. If diseased men had died, they were vampires, or would be soon, and they couldn’t be given a chance to rise again.

      There was a group of trees ahead of her and she continued walking toward them. As she neared the little copse, she felt her muscles suddenly stiffen, and it seemed that the breeze blew chill against her flesh.

      She saw a shadow, something, like a wisp of movement through the trees, almost a trick of the eyes.

      The sun had not yet fallen, though it was sinking low in the western sky. A sense of great unease filled her. She was suddenly certain that they hadn’t taken down even the majority of the vampires in the prison; in fact, she wondered if the prison had been nothing more than a prelude to a huge infection about to overrun the entire capital city.

      Then she wondered if something hadn’t been acting on her to lure her into the trees….

      She held her ground, dead still and waiting.

      Shadows moved again.

      She refused to be trapped. She wanted the creatures out in the open.

      And so she stood. Dead still.

      And waited.

      And finally noticed the first of the shadows coming for her.

      Young vampire. It approached as a shadow, slowly, but quickly turned. Her stomach became a knot. It was a young Rebel soldier. His uniform. His face. He barely had a beard. But he came at her, and she had no choice. She ducked and turned, grabbing him by the shoulders, and hitting his jugular—as he tried to do the same to her.

      She had barely ripped at his throat before the next shadow fell upon her. She reached into her skirt pocket, then stabbed a stake into his heart. Before that one had even fallen, another was after her, this one in the uniform of a Union prison guard. She ripped the stake from the one body to strike into the heart of the other—

      And saw more shadows and figures, bloody and gaunt, dressed well and in tatters, coming from the woods.

      At least ten of them.

      A chill at the back of her neck and she knew something was behind her. She spun to tend to the attack. Speed was everything; she had to be prepared to defend herself from those coming at her from the woods. She wanted to call for Cole, but with their speed and her breath seizing in rhythm with her movements, it was too much all at once.

      The thing behind her was little but flesh and bone. He went down quickly, having used whatever fledgling strength it had to become shadow and slip behind her. She faced the trees again, with trepidation. There were so many of them. They had never imagined so many.

      In a fleeting second, she saw that something more was in the copse of trees. A greater shadow, a darker shadow. Fear set a cold grip around her heart, and yet, even as she felt the terror, she realized that the shadow-thing, only noticeable because it was even darker than the rest of the blackening night sky—it was actually battling the creatures within the trees, preventing them from spilling out to assail her.

      “Megan!”

      She heard Cole’s cry as she met the Union sergeant running toward her.

      Cole ran past her and into the fray precisely prepared. He held a stake in one hand, and a bottle of holy water in the other. When two of the beings fell upon her at once, she’d have to admit that only because one of them was stunned by the holy water did she survive. She struck out with her stake, and then struck again. Cole was moving expertly at her side. Despite the massive ebony wing of the giant shadow-thing in the trees, at least six more of the beings escaped the copse of trees and came at them.

      But she wasn’t fighting alone anymore.

      One by one, they went down.

      She was fighting with Cole. And the black shadow had saved them from the full force of the mismatched army in the woods.

      Suddenly, there was nothing.

      She and Cole had set their backs to each other, and together, they had fended off every assault; they had actually been an awesome force.

      They remained still, tense and waiting. She could hear the thunder of his heart, and the heave of his breath as they waited.

      That, and nothing more.

      When she looked to the trees, there was nothing.

      “It’s over,” she whispered softly.

      Around them lay a field of rotting dead. Blue uniforms, gray, butternut. They wore insignias that denoted them as militia, captains, privates, Army of the Potomac. The Southern boys were mostly in rags.

      “Wait, keep an eye on the trees,” Cole warned.

      “No. There is nothing more there.”

      “How do you know that?”

      She turned to look at him at last. “Because we weren’t alone, Cole. Someone was in among the creatures there, someone who helped us.”

      He shook his head. His words sounded harsh. “No, Megan. Why do you think that Brendan Vincent went to find your brother in the first place? A staunch Federalist seeking the help of a Rebel doctor? You and Cody are anomalies. A vampire is a predator. A disease. A mass of infection. A parasite that must thieve blood to survive.”

      “You’re wrong. Some can be…nearly human,” she said.

      Cole paused, and she knew that she had struck a chord with him. She didn’t know what had really