George Martin - Fevre Dream

Finally he slept again.

“Abner,” came the whisper, disturbing his dreams. “Abner,” came the voice, calling, “let me in.”

Abner Marsh sat up suddenly. Joshua York was standing on his balcony, rapping on the glass of his window with a pale, scarred hand.

“Hold on,” Marsh said. It was still black outside and the house was quiet. Joshua smiled as Marsh climbed out of bed and padded toward him. His face was lined with cracks and fissures, husks of dying skin. Marsh opened the doors to the balcony, and Joshua stepped through, wearing his sad white suit, all stained and rumpled now. It wasn’t until he was in the room that Abner Marsh remembered the empty bottle he’d tossed into the river. He stepped back suddenly. “Joshua, you ain’t… you ain’t thirstin’, are you?”

“No,” said Joshua York. His gray cloak moved and curled in the wind that rustled through the open balcony doors. “I did not want to break the lock, or the glass. Do not be afraid, Abner.”

“You’re better,” Marsh said, looking at him. York’s lips were still cracked, his eyes were sunk in deep purple-black pits, but he was much improved. At noon he’d looked like death.

“Yes,” Joshua said. “Abner, I’ve come to take my leave.”

“What?” Marsh was flabbergasted. “You can’t leave.”

“I must, Abner. They saw me, whoever owns this plantation. I have a vague memory of being treated by a doctor. Tomorrow I will be healed. What will they think then?”

“What will they think when they go to bring you breakfast and you ain’t there?” Marsh said.

“No doubt they will be puzzled, but it will be easier to account for nonetheless. You can be as shocked as they are, Abner. Tell them that I must have wandered off in a fever. I will never be found.”

“Valerie is dead,” Marsh said.

“Yes,” said Joshua. “There is a wagon outside with a coffin in it. I guessed it was for her.” He sighed and shook his head. “I failed her. I have failed all my people. We should never have taken her.”

“She made her choice,” Marsh said. “At least she got free of him .”

“Free,” Joshua York said bitterly. “Is this the freedom I bring my people? A poor gift. For a time, before Damon Julian came into my life, I dared to dream that Valerie and I might be lovers someday. Not in the fashion of my own people, inflamed by blood, but with a passion born of tenderness, and affection, and mutual desire. We talked of that.” His mouth twisted in self-reproach. “She believed in me. I killed her.”

“Like hell,” Marsh said. “At the end, she said she loved you. She didn’t have to come with us. She wanted to. We all got to choose, you said. I think she picked right. She was an awful pretty lady.”

Joshua York shuddered. “She walks in beauty, like the night,” he said very quietly, staring down at his clenched fist. “Sometimes I question whether there is an hour for my race, Abner. The nights are full of blood and terror, but the days are merciless.”

“Where are you goin’?” Marsh asked.

Joshua looked grim. “Back.”

Marsh scowled. “You can’t.”

“I have no other choice.”

“You just escaped from there,” Marsh said hotly. “After all we went through to get loose, you can’t just up and go back. Wait. Hide in the woods or something, go to some town. I’ll get loose of here and we’ll join up, make some plans for getting that steamboat back.”

“Again?” Joshua shook his head. “There is a story I never told you, Abner. It happened a long time ago, during my first months in England, when the red thirst still came upon me regularly, driving me out in search of blood. One night I had fought it, and lost, and I hunted through the midnight streets. I came upon a couple, a man and a woman hurrying somewhere. My habit was to shun such prey, to take only those who walked alone, for safety’s sake. But the thirst was on me badly, and even from a distance I could see that the woman was very beautiful. She drew me like a flame draws the moth, and I came. I attacked from darkness, and got my hands around the man’s neck, and ripped away half his throat, I thought. Then I shoved him aside and he fell. He was a huge man. I took the woman in my arms, and bent my teeth to her neck, ever so gently. My eyes held her still, entranced her. I had just tasted the first hot, sweet flow of blood when I was seized from behind and torn from her embrace. It was the man, her companion. I had not killed him after all. His neck was thick with muscle and fat, and while I had ripped it open so it dripped blood, he was still on his feet. He never said a word. He only put up his fists as a prizefighter might, and hit me square in the face. He was quite strong. The blow stunned me, and opened a gash above my eye. I was already distracted. Being pulled from your victim like that is a sickening feeling, dizzy, disorienting. The man hit me again, and I lashed out backhanded at him. He went down heavily, long gashes across his cheek, one of his eyes half-torn from his skull. I turned back to the woman, pressed my mouth to the open wound. And then he was on me again. I tore his arm loose of me and all but ripped it from its socket, and I broke one of his legs for good measure, with a kick. He went down. This time I watched. Painstakingly, he got up again, raised his fists, moved toward me. Twice more I knocked him down, and twice more he rose. Finally I broke his neck, and he died, and then I killed his woman.

“Afterward, I could not put him from my mind. He must have known that I was not entirely human. He must have realized, strong as he was, that he was no match for my strength, my speed, my thirst. I was distracted by my own fever, and the beauty of his companion, and I missed my kill. He might have been spared. He could have run. He could have called out for help. He could have taken a moment and found a weapon. But he did not. He saw his lady in my arms, saw me bleeding her, and all he could think of was to get up and come at me with those big, foolish fists of his. When I had time to reflect, I found myself admiring his strength, his mad courage, the love he must have had for that woman.

“But Abner, for all that, he was stupid. He saved neither his lady nor himself.

“You remind me of that man, Abner. Julian has taken your Fevre Dream from you, and all you can think of is getting her back, so you get up and cock your fists and come straight on, and Julian knocks you down again. One day you will not get up, if you continue these attacks. Abner, give it up!”

“What the hell you sayin’?” Marsh demanded in an angry voice. “It’s Julian and his vampires got to worry now. That goddamn steamer ain’t goin’ no place without a pilot.”

“I can pilot her,” said Joshua York.

“Will you?”

“Yes.”

Marsh felt sick with anger and betrayal. “Why?” he demanded. “Joshua, you ain’t like them!”

“I will be, unless I return,” York said gravely. “Unless I have my potion, the thirst will come on me, all the fiercer for the years I have held it at bay. And then I will kill, and drink, and be as Julian is. The next time I entered a bedroom by night, it would not be to talk.”

“Go back then! Fetch your damned drink! But don’t move that damned steamer, not until I can get there.”

“With armed men. With sharpened stakes and hate in your hearts. To kill. I will not permit that.”

“Whose side are you on?”

“The side of my people.”

“Julian’s side,” spat Marsh.

“No,” said Joshua York. He sighed. “Listen, Abner, and try to understand. Julian is the bloodmaster. He controls them, all of them. Some of them are like him, corrupt, evil. Katherine, Raymond, others, they follow him willingly. But not all of them. You saw Valerie, you heard her in the yawl today. I am not alone. Our races are not so very different. All of us have good and evil in us, and all of us dream. Yet if you attack the steamer, if you move against Julian, they will defend him, no matter what their private hopes may be. Centuries of enmity and fear will drive them. A river of blood flows between day and night, and it cannot be crossed easily. Those who hesitate, if any, will be compelled.