I Travel by Night (3 page)

When Lawson reached the wooden gate that had an image of a kneeling Jesus carved upon it, his mouth was bloody. The blood had run down his chin; he’d used a handkerchief to try to clean up, but it was useless. His willpower was going. It was a battle he had fought long and hard, every day of this cursed life, but he knew that—like Shiloh in that Bloody April—it was a battle he was bound to lose.

The gate was unlocked, and opened onto a stone path that led through a garden. Crickets chirped in the grass and other insects whirred and sang softly in the trees. It was a place of peace, but there was no peace in what remained the human part of Trevor Lawson’s soul. He followed the path past a white-painted church with a steeple and belltower and then to a small house next to the church, where he walked up upon the darkened front porch and pulled a cord that rang a little silver bell within. He waited, smelling the blood that stained him. His stomach lurched, but his veins sang. In another moment gas lamps came on inside the house, showing through the windows, and a figure in a dark blue robe with a red sash approached the door. The figure held a pair of tapers in a candleholder. When the door was opened, the candleglow fell upon Lawson’s gore-smeared face.

“Oh,” said the elderly man, with a pained frown. His hair was a white cloud, his face deeply wrinkled, his chin wide and square and his nose a magnificent statement of God’s ability to create an oversized monument out of flesh. “I’m suspecting that’s not blood from a cow, is it?”

Lawson shook his head.

“Come in,” said the man. “Don’t drip.”

“It’s mostly dried.” Lawson answered, as he crossed the threshold. The door was closed behind him. Lawson stood in a comfortable sitting-room with several overstuffed chairs and a brown sofa. Above a fireplace was hung a white crucifix, the sight of which made Lawson’s eyes burn and water, so he chose to look away. That, too, was getting worse.

“You,” said Father John Deale, “look a mess.” He sighed heavily. “We’ll get you cleaned up, but…oh Lord, your jacket. Ruined, of course. Do I dare to ask…
who
supplied your meal tonight?”

Lawson took his Stetson off. He ran a hand through his shaggy blonde hair. He felt a hundred years old, but in truth he was only fifty two. Though he appeared to be nearer thirty, his age before his rebirth had been twenty-seven. “There was a drunkard lying in a doorway on Dauphine Street,” he said, his gaze cast to the smooth-planked floor. “A middle-aged man, sleeping. I wanted to walk past. I
tried
.”

“Not very successfully, I see,” said Father Deale, setting the candleholder on a sidetable.

“No, not very.” Lawson hung his hat upon a wall rack. His eyes were flinty. “He just…was
there
, and he smelled of bourbon and cigar smoke, and his blood was fresh. I did try to walk past, but…” His gaze, imploring, went to the priest. “Yes, I nearly killed him. Dragged him into an alley and drained him almost dry, so that
I
could live. And that’s my story, isn’t it?”

“For now. But you have the power to write a new one.”

“With red ink?” asked Lawson. His bloody smile would have terrified anyone in New Orleans, but Father Deale knew him. Father Deale supported Lawson as he could, for Lawson in spite of all appearances was on the side of the angels.

“Blue ink, in time. With a regular pen and not…these.” The priest waved an age-spotted hand in front of his own mouth, indicating the eye teeth. Of which his were entirely normal. “Come into the bathroom, let’s get your mess cleaned up.”

When the job was done, the blood wiped away and Lawson’s jacket and shirt removed and replaced by an indigo shirt from Father Deale’s closet, the priest guided Lawson back to the sitting room. He poured Lawson a glass of Medoc, and himself the same. Lawson sank into a chair, recalling the first time he had staggered to this man’s door nearly two years ago, in a similar bloodied condition, to fall upon his knees and beg for forgiveness. The priest had listened in silence to the vampire’s story, and at last had given him a prayer not only of forgiveness but also of strength. And thus had their friendship—and partnership, in a way—begun, as Father Deale had become Lawson’s connection to the daytime world, his support in tribulations like this one, and his hope that one day he might throw off this heavy burden and find his way back to the sun.

But to do that, Lawson would have to find—and kill—the vampire he knew as LaRouge. There had been many trails, but always she slipped the moment. The Dark Society protected her, for she was their deathless and beautiful Queen.

“Christian Melchoir,” said Lawson, after a few sips of the Medoc. “Whoever he is, he knows me. He has a young woman in a swamp town called Nocturne. Kidnapped her. I’m to deliver the ransom.”

“A trap, of course.” The priest had situated himself in another chair across from his visitor.

“I have to go. Into what…I don’t know. But I have to.” Lawson drank from his glass again. It wasn’t the exlixir of life for him but it was a very good substitute, just as were the bottles of cattle blood that Father Deale supplied to him from the slaughterhouse in Algiers across the river.
For religious purposes
, the priest told the slaughterhouse manager. Nobody asked any questions, the blood was bought and paid for. Cattle blood served its purpose of keeping Lawson alive, but after a time of that he found his senses dulled and his appetite for the human substance as demanding as the need for any opiate, yet the drinking of human blood awakened his senses to their fullest. The longest he’d ever gone without opening a human vein was three months, which had reduced him nearly to a hobbling husk.

“Will you come out of there, is the question,” said Father Deale, with a lifting of his thick white eyebrows. “And you know the Dark Society will never let a human woman go free. She’s likely already been turned.”

“Possibly.” Lawson saw some blood under the fingernails of his left hand that the washcloth had missed. Now that he was full, the sight was repellent. He closed the hand into a fist. The priest’s understanding of the Dark Society was not just through Lawson’s experience. He had had his own encounter with otherworldly forces when he was a younger man, in the now-forgotten town of Blancmortain, in western Louisiana. Over the long hot summer of 1838, John Deale had been witness to the deaths of ten townspeople due to snakelike bites on the throat and the draining of blood. That had caused the citizens of the little farming community to panic and pack up, leaving Blancmortain for whatever force wished to live there.

“Something happened tonight,” Lawson went on. “I know I almost murdered someone. That’s not what I mean. I had…an encounter with something. A vampire, yes…but
more
. I’ve seen shapechangers before, but never one like that.” He took one more drink and set the glass aside. Across the room, a pendulum clock chimed the hour of two. “I think as they age, they become more adept at it. I think…something of their spirit…their essence…is involved. This one…was very strong. If I hadn’t had the bullets…well, thank God—and
you
—for those.”

“Pleased to do my part. How are you set?”

“I’m fine with the Colt, but I’ll need a box more for the derringer.”

“All right. You’re leaving on this mission soon?”

“Tomorrow night.” Lawson glanced at the hands on the clock. “
Tonight
, I mean.”

“What you need will be ready for you by sundown. Shall I have it sent to the hotel?”

Lawson nodded. That was the usual arrangement.

“Is there anything else I can help you with?”

Lawson thought about it. He looked at the crucifix above the mantel, and again his eyes watered and burned. He had not been very religious before his conversion, but now he longed for the healing touch and mercy of God yet he felt so distant from it. He considered that this feeling grew stronger in the vampire tribe until it became pure rage toward anything Good in this universe. He pulled his gaze away from the Cross. “I may need,” said Lawson after another moment, “something else. Let me think. I’m going walking in awhile, by the river. I’ll write you what I need before dawn and have the note sent to you in the morning.”

“All right. I’ll do what I can.”

That was all Lawson could ask. Both of them knew he might not come back from this nest of the Dark Society called Nocturne. But both of them also knew he had no choice but to go.

He stood up and retrieved his black Stetson. “Thank you, Father,” he said quietly. “As always…your help is much appreciated. I’ll leave you now.”

Father Deale stood up as well. He reached out and touched Lawson’s shoulder, then drew his hand back because the vampire in the room had flinched slightly. “You’re in pain?”

“Bruises,” said Lawson. He smiled grimly. “But yes…always in pain.” He waited for the priest to open the door. He took one more look at the crucifix, held it as long as he could, and then looked away. “Thank you, John,” he said.

“I’ll pray for you.”

“Pray for a young woman named Eva Kingsley,” Lawson answered, putting the Stetson on his head. “Pray for her soul and her sanity. Good morning to you.” He started to go out, but a thought—a question—occurred to him that caused him to hesitate. He frowned, staring into the priest’s dark brown eyes. “Do you think I’m the only one who fights back?” 

Father Deale took a moment in replying. “I think,” he said, “you’re the only one who fights back who has survived so long. That’s why they so desperately want you destroyed.” Lawson went out the door, onto the path that led through the garden, and into the night.

He walked at a human pace, a solitary figure no longer absolutely human.

The night was his territory, his world, his blessing. It was also his grief and his prison. Away from the glare of the sun that hurt the eyes and burned the flesh, he was aware of the perfume of the night breezes, the stillness of the dark, the protection he enjoyed between the hours of dawn and dusk. This was his time, yet he longed to walk in the daylight and to witness the sun’s movement. How he missed the shadows of midday! His flesh could not bear such fierce fire, even on a cloudy day. His rhythm and habits now were dictated by the creature within, the monster that LaRouge had created. He was a construction still of heart and lungs, of bone and muscle. Yet he felt his humanity drifting away from him, night after night. When he drew the black curtains shut across the windows of his suite at the Hotel Sanctuaire and lay in the bed that was also draped with black curtains, he thought he might as well be positioning himself in a grave. He was always cold. He could never fully rest. Some part of himself reviled the other. He was caught in the midst of transformation, knowing that over time he would lose all his humanity and become a creature of blood need, not caring who he had to slaughter to get it. His body was changing; the strength and quickness were welcome attributes, yes, but it was in small things that he realized he was on a certain path to becoming a monster. He could still drink a little wine and liquor, but straight water made him sick. He peed maybe a shot glass full of murky brown liquid every few days. Food turned his stomach. He would never have believed, in his previous life, that he could have tracked his progress from man through the deepening clutches of vampirism by how little he pulled the chain on his toilet.

He was dying, of course. Becoming one of them, totally and truely, was a death in life. But he couldn’t give up; he couldn’t lie down in that grave and let
them
win. It was not in the nature of a captain of the Nineteenth Alabama Infantry Regiment, who had both taken blood and shed blood at the battle of Shiloh. It was not in the nature of Trevor Lawson, once a young Alabama lawyer and a valued husband and father.

He walked the night. He walked along the curve of the Mississippi. He walked through the silent streets of early morning, as he pondered the future. By the time he returned to the Hotel Sanctuaire, went to the front desk and wrote Garrison, the night clerk, a note to be delivered to Father John Deale at the Church of the Apostle St. Simon, the sun was a faint blush in the eastern sky. Lawson stood outside as long as he could, watching the light strengthen. Then he pulled his hat down low over his eyes and went up the stairs to his room, where he double-locked the door, closed the heavy black window curtains, took off his clothes and settled his pale naked body upon the bed. His bruises would fade quickly; they always did. He drew the black curtains around the bed and by habit touched the ebony leather-tooled gunbelt with the two backward-holstered Colt .44s that lay next to his right side. Now he could sleep.

Before he drifted off into dreams of again walking in the hot summer sun, his shadow striding in front of him like a taunt, Lawson heard the first of the street-vendors down on Conti Street begin their distinctive morning calls. It was a woman, calling in a musical sing-song voice, “
Apples, sweet apples, apples for sale.
”

Lawson reluctantly let go of his hold on the daytime world. He sank away, in his soft grave beyond the curtains black.