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She was whole; she didn’t seem maddened, diseased, in any way.
He had to hesitate; she might be among the living. Untainted.
“Who the hell are you, and why the hell shouldn’t I kill you?” he demanded.
“Strike Cole, strike! It’s deception, it’s always deception!” Brendan cried.
He lifted his stake again.
“Please, for the love of God! I don’t want to hurt you!” she cried. She glanced toward the others, then back at him.
“What?”
“Cole!” Cody shouted in warning.
At his back!
He twisted, just in time to spear the man wearing a preacher’s collar who was about to rip apart his back. He didn’t dare take more than seconds to shake the fellow from his stake, not with the woman beneath his feet.
The body fell near her and she shuddered, but her eyes never left Cole’s.
“Cole!” Brendan warned—there were two of them circling him.
“Give me a reason not to kill you!” Cole shouted to the woman at his feet.
She continued staring straight up at him.
“Cole!” Cody shouted at him this time; he could see that Cody was involved in helping Brendan—there were three around him, and now one had gained a certain power and speed, probably one of the first to be infected in the prison.
It sickened him. It had always sickened him. Self-survival had allowed him to learn to kill the creatures, just as the need for law and order and justice had always helped him out when a firm hand was needed in Victory.
But too often this felt like…
Murder.
He didn’t want to do it; God help him, he didn’t want to do it. Neither did he want to be seduced into a dreaded death, granting mercy, and finding that a harpy suddenly flew from the face and shape of the angel, and dragged sharp, wicked fangs into his neck.
Tension riddled his frame.
Time. Time could be everything.
His fingers wound more tightly around the stake.
“Damn you! Prove it, prove you’re not one of them. For the love of God, then, give me a reason not to kill you!” he shouted above the fray to the woman beneath his feet.
She looked straight at Cole. “One can prove nothing in this world.”
He raised the stake with purpose.
“Wait, damn you,” she cried. “I’ll give you a very good reason not to kill me.”
“And that is?”
“Fool! I’ve been fighting with you, not against you.”
What?
“I’m Megan Fox. Don’t you understand, cowboy? I’m Megan Fox, Cody’s long-lost sister,” she said with a dry and weary drawl that shook him, even in the middle of the melee.
CHAPTER TWO
MRS. GRAYBOW’S ROOMING House on the edge of the mall was a pleasant place. Until the war it had just been the home of Mr. and Mrs. Arnold Graybow.
But Arnie Graybow had been among the first to die at Manassas, and so now Martha Graybow, a thirty-two-year-old widow with two little mouths to feed, ran a boardinghouse. Mrs. Graybow and her brood, Artie and Marni, twelve and seven respectively, resided in the carriage house in back and to the left of the main house, otherwise empty now with the carriage and horses having long ago been sold. The main house itself consisted of five bedrooms upstairs, a lovely dining room, parlor, kitchen, pantry and music room downstairs. It was a fine and private temporary residence for vampire hunters.
As fortune would have it, Megan Fox was friends with Martha Graybow. They both hailed from Richmond. Once upon a time, Martha would babysit her when her mother had business at the bank, or would sometimes allow her to “help out” at the boardinghouse, though she’d been too young to be of any real assistance.
But, of course, Martha had no idea what Megan was up to nowadays. Martha, bless her, thought that Megan was just a fiery young woman, the kind that didn’t swoon, that was happiest standing up against injustice. And indeed, Megan had faith, but she was pretty sure the world had a long way to go. One day there would be justice, and equality would exist. But not this way, not with the North decimating the South. Instead of shaming their brethren, the industrial North should have been figuring out ways to educate those in the South. But maybe she was wrong. Maybe half the planters were just greedy, and they didn’t see anything equal in their darker brothers. Nothing about the war—despite the bloodshed, death and devastation—was cut-and-dried, or black-and-white. It was all gray and red—the color of the blood of all the Americans dying in the war, Yankee, Rebel, black man, white man, yellow, pink, dark or tan.
But she knew that a different war was also being waged. One that most of the world knew little about. Sometimes, she really wanted the entire world to know about it. Maybe they would stop fighting one another and face the true threat if they knew, but the words she had spoken to Cole were true: it was hard to prove the existence of the evil creatures to a large, disorganized populace to a satisfactory degree. The world wasn’t ready to understand that the myths actually represented a very real part of the world.
And a part of her.
Cole Granger, the tall, sturdy, striking fellow who had nearly staked her, paced the room. His eyes were more than suspicious. He was thinking that he should have staked her.
Select—very select—Union troops had been called in for the cleanup of the prison fight. And so, now, there were four of them at the boardinghouse, and she sat on a chair in the center of the music room—the music room, rather than the parlor, which faced the street and afforded less privacy—seated very much as any prisoner of war might have been.
She was being questioned.
Cole kept pacing, trying to keep silent, and let Cody Fox take charge. She was attempting to explain to them all that she was Cody’s sister. And it was interesting, of course, because she knew that Cody would certainly have told them all that he’d grown up without a sister, which would have been, in his mind, correct. They didn’t know what she knew, of course, because she was Cody’s younger sister—and she knew everything that their father had told their mother long after Cody had left. Still, she hadn’t thought that it was going to be this difficult to explain.
But none of them had actually managed to sit quiet long enough for a nuanced discussion. She tried to remember the barrage of questions they had last voiced—in the order they had voiced them.
“No. Yes. No. And yes, and yes, I believe,” she said, staring from one man to the next. Brendan Vincent first, older than the other two men and straight as a ramrod—a military man, possibly retired. His eyes showed age and knowledge; the hollow structure of his face betrayed pain even as the mobility of his mouth hinted at a kindness remaining despite the lessons of the world. Then there was Cody Fox. Her brother. He should easily believe her—apparently, the wheaten color of their hair had been their father’s, along with the strange hazel-and-gold hue of their eyes. He had sharp eyes, ever watchful. And shouldn’t he be able to sense their mutually other nature? And Cole Granger. Rock solid, with piercing blue eyes of a shade deep and dark blue, enigmatic. In contrast to the others, his hair was almost jet-black. Each of his limbs seemed muscled and toned, as did the breadth of his chest. He was evidently a physical man, one accustomed to constant movement—the look of a frontiersman, someone who met every challenge. His mouth was grim and one that had apparently forgotten all about trust or kindness. Maybe that wasn’t true. He seemed to trust Cody Fox and Brendan Vincent.
“She’s got a sarcastic mouth on her, that’s for sure,” Cole said.
“Yeah. That could mean some proof that she’s Cody’s sister,” Brendan commented.
Cody’s gaze turned on Brendan, ever so slightly dry and indignant.
Cole Granger was suddenly hunched down in front of her. “Who are you really, and what were you doing there?” he demanded quietly. But even when his words were soft, they felt deep enough to fill any room.
She inhaled deeply, refusing to be intimidated by the man.
“I’m Cody Fox’s sister, Megan Fox. You can ask me a million times, and I will give you the same answer. There is none other to give,” she said, staring back at him.
“I don’t have a sister,” Cody said harshly.
“Well, yes, you do, and it’s me. Oh—and there might be others out there, too. Our father is out there, still, I believe. I know about you, and I’m sorry you know nothing about me. My mother actually looked for you for many years and discovered that you were in New Orleans. But you were gone by the time I managed to get there.”
Cody glanced at his friends, a glance that assured her that he might be starting to believe her.
“Anyone might have researched Cody Fox,” Cole Granger said. He was still directly in front of her, and his proximity was unnerving. The man seemed to have iron in his jaw, and she wasn’t sure that he’d yet blinked since the interrogation began. If she didn’t have a certain inner sense that she’d developed as a child, she might have thought he was one of…whatever she and Cody were.
A unique kind of “half-breed.”
“And you just happened to be at the prison tonight?” Brendan Vincent asked, his words filled with doubt.
“Nothing just happens. I knew Cody was there. And if a Texas sheriff can be found in Washington, D.C., right now, there’s obviously something going on. Of course, absent even those indicators, I knew already. I was sent by the government,” Megan explained.
Brendan Vincent snorted—very rudely—she thought. “We were sent by the government—I know that. And I know that you weren’t.”
She stared at him coldly. “There are two governments in this country right now, sir. I realize that you prefer not to recognize the second, but it does exist.”
She thought that he would pull his gun then and there. He refrained because Cody had lifted a hand. “Brendan, come on, we all know that we don’t take sides in this.”
“She’s taking a side!” Brendan protested.
Cole continued to stare at her.
The whole thing was bizarre. Cole Granger was a Texas sheriff. Her half brother had hailed from New Orleans. From the research she had done, she was pretty sure that Brendan Vincent hailed from Texas himself, though he was clearly U.S. military through and through. But, then again, Lincoln had asked the South’s major asset—General Robert E. Lee—to lead the Union troops. Lee had suffered long and hard while making his decision, but in the end he had thought himself a Virginian above all else. The war was a horrible tangle of loyalties, with half the boys on the bloody fields not sure of exactly what it was that they fought for.
With a pang, she remembered her mother’s words.
The war itself is wrong. Doesn’t matter, we’re all losers in this debacle. Time, talk and the legislature should have taken precedence over the use of arms, and now…well, we have dead boys everywhere.
She’d loved her mother. Loved her so much. Her look at the world around her, and her ability to discover the truth, no matter how many layers of opinion and variation were piled upon it.
“No. I’m not taking a side. Any more than you are,” Megan told Brendan.
“So, then…?”
Megan hesitated again. “All right. I’m from Virginia. I grew up in Richmond.”
“The capital of the Confederacy,” he said, nodding, as if that immediately meant she had fallen in from the skies.
“Brendan,” Cody protested. “I was in New Orleans, and you came after me. And you’re not even on active duty these days.”
Ah! So the man who seemed to think of himself as the Stars and Stripes wasn’t even official.
“Please, I don’t know who is right and who is wrong anymore, really,” Megan said. “And I can’t do a damned thing about the fact that the two sides are just going to continue to shred one another to pieces until the agony becomes too great and someone on high is brought down into the dust and realizes that it has to end. I am here with the…consult of a government, but it has nothing to do with which government has the right to which piece of land. And if I’m touchy on the subject, well, I am from Virginia. But I wasn’t asked to come here because of that—or because the South wishes to cause any harm to guards, prisoners, soldiers, nurses, visitors…. It’s not to stage a mass escape. It’s not for any reason of warfare.” She looked at the three men, and then softly added, “Accepted warfare, that is.”
Cole remained hunkered down in front of her.
“So, who sent you?” he asked.
She paused. She wasn’t at all sure he was going to believe her. “It doesn’t matter. I was sent by a Confederate general, one who’s seen what an outbreak can do,” she said at last.
“And how are you so familiar with outbreaks?” Cole asked.
She inhaled. “The Battle of Fredericksburg.”
“What about it? You were there? You’re in the army, of course,” Cole said drily.
She stood, angry, and glad to see that she nearly knocked him down. He was quick, though, and regained his balance to stand, as well. She turned away from him, talking to Cody Fox and Brendan Vincent. “There was a time when I was a conveyor of information.”
“A spy?” Cody asked.
She shrugged. “All of us are caught in this.”
“There was a time—no more?” Brendan asked. The older man was perplexed. A loyal Unionist, he had apparently come to terms with his need for Cody; he would come to terms with her as well, eventually.
She shook her head. “This is—this is something that goes beyond war.”
“Go on,” Cody said.
“The Battle of Fredericksburg was horrible, truly devastating—”
“A complete route of the Union,” Brendan interrupted. “And yet you say ‘horrible.’”
“A Southern soldier was so agonized by Union losses that he brought water to the wounded Federal soldiers on the field,” she said. “Sergeant Richard Kirkland, from South Carolina, didn’t even bother with a flag of truce—he had to alleviate the suffering. The men whispered that Lee, watching from the heights, commented, ‘It is well that war was so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.’ The point I am making is that the battle itself and the aftermath were so strewn with blood, it was difficult to notice one man’s agony or death…. Or even that of several men.”
Cole, now with his arms crossed over his chest, was frowning and seemed to understand what was going on. Completely.
“When was the vampire attack?” he asked.
She didn’t mean to do so, but she shivered, remembering. “It was cold,” she began. “December, and cold. And the men on the field screamed and cried. Many of us then went out to see what we could do. I was with a fellow who’d had his leg destroyed by shrapnel. That’s when I heard the first scream—a scream so different…. I turned, and I saw the…the man. Darkness was falling, dusk was all around and at first I was confused. I thought it merely someone in a greatcoat who had come to help the wounded, as well. But that scream came again. More chilling than anything before…and I heard quick movement and then the sucking sound…and I looked around. One of our medics—a man who had not been wounded—
protested, demanding to know what was going on. And then one of them fell upon him, and he screamed….”
Megan paused. Cole’s expression had not changed during any of this. “I knew then. But there were several of them, and the men on the field weren’t really listening to me. I’m sure they thought I was crazy and that whenever they delivered pistol shots into the chest of one of the creatures, it would stay down. But I knew. And I was armed. I was able to take down three of the four I counted. But it was insane on the field! Those who witnessed the event and survived were certain that the opposing troops had somehow risen to fight one another again.”
“The Battle of Fredericksburg was a while back,” Cody said.
“We’ve been chasing this for a long time,” Megan said. “Through many battles. But the thing is—now it’s all come here. For me, Fredericksburg was the beginning. We think we have the situation under control, and then…there’s a new outbreak. Recently, after the Battle of the Wilderness, things grew worse.” She drew a deep breath. “There were dead and wounded from both Rebel and Union armies, and we know that some of ours were taken…and that a few of the officers were taken to the prisoner-of-war facility where we met tonight. I’d already been sent North when word came that there were ‘riots’ going on at the prison. And so I…I came. I’d heard as well, of course, that I might at last find my long-lost brother among those sent in.”
“How did you hear that?” Cody asked, frowning.
She laughed. “No major feat of intelligence. People are whispering about it on the streets. And, I believe, it will remain nothing more than whispering. Most people mock the idea of anything outside the ordinary. Cody, you’re simply known as an excellent man at taking down a horde of unruly men, and Cole Granger—” she paused, turning to stare at the man, hoping that she had all her dignity about her as she did so “—Cole Granger is famous, or infamous, for being the best man to maintain law in a wild frontier town. And, naturally, Brendan Vincent, it’s long known that you’re a staunch Unionist—despite being a Southerner from one of the Texas towns recently annihilated…by ‘outlaws,’ of course, they say.”
All three men were quiet, staring at her. She hadn’t really lied; people were whispering on the streets. She hadn’t explained just how far up in the Southern echelon it was known that something beyond the absolute horror of warfare was going on. She didn’t want to—certainly not now. She wasn’t trusted as it was. Cody was trusted; she was not. They surely knew what he was. And Cody had been with the Southern army—until his wounds had sent him home to New Orleans, held firmly in Union hands. All this, and still they trusted him but not her.
Cole set a hand on her upper arm, spinning her around to look at him, still the skeptic. She stared at the hand. He stared back at her; he didn’t let go.
“What?” she asked icily.
“Why didn’t you try to contact us first?”
