George Martin - Fevre Dream

Marsh tried to raise and aim his shotgun, but it was too late and he was too damned slow. Julian landed right on top of him, and sent the gun spinning from Marsh’s grasp, and both of them went down. Marsh tried to roll free. Something grabbed him, pulled. He smashed out blindly with a huge rough fist. The answering blow came out of nowhere and nearly tore his head off. For a moment he lay stunned. His arm was seized and wrenched roughly behind him. Marsh screamed. The pressure did not let up. He tried to push himself to his feet, and his arm was bent upward with awful force. He heard it snap, and he screamed again, louder, as the pain hammered through him. He was pushed roughly to the deck, his face hard against the moldy carpeting. “Struggle, my dear Captain, and I’ll break your other arm,” Julian’s mellow voice told him. “Remain still.”

“Get away from him!” Joshua said. Marsh lifted his eyes and saw him standing twenty feet away.

“I hardly think so,” Julian replied. “Do not move, dear Joshua. If you come at me, I will tear out Captain Marsh’s throat before you are within five feet. Stay where you are and I will spare him. Do you understand?”

Marsh tried to move, and bit his lip in anguish. Joshua stood his ground, hands poised like claws in front of him. “Yes,” he said, “I understand.” His gray eyes looked deadly, but uncertain. Marsh looked around for the shotgun. It lay five feet away, well beyond his reach.

“Good,” said Damon Julian. “Now, why don’t we make ourselves comfortable?” Marsh heard Julian pull over a chair. He seated himself just behind Marsh. “I’ll sit here, in the shadows. You can take a seat beneath that shaft of sunlight the captain so obligingly let into the saloon. Go on, Joshua. Do as I say, unless you want to see him die.”

“If you kill him, there will be nothing between us,” Joshua said.

“Perhaps I am willing to take that risk,” Julian replied. “Are you?”

Joshua York looked around slowly, frowned, took up a chair and moved it beneath the shattered skylight. He seated himself in the sun, a good fifteen feet away from them.

“Take off your hat, Joshua. I want to see your face.”

York grimaced, removed his wide-brimmed hat, and sent it sailing off into the shadows.

“Fine,” said Damon Julian. “Now we can wait together. For a while, Joshua.” He laughed lightly. “Until dark.”

Aboard the Steamer Fevre Dream, May 1870

Sour Billy Tipton opened his eyes and tried to scream. Nothing passed his lips but a soft whimper. He sucked in his breath, and swallowed blood. Sour Billy had drunk enough blood to recognize the taste. Only this time it was his own blood. He coughed and fought for air. He didn’t feel so good. His chest was on fire all over, and it was wet where he was lying. Blood, more blood. “Help me,” he called out, weakly. No one could have heard him more than three feet away. He shuddered, and closed his eyes again, like he could maybe sleep and make the hurt go away.

But the hurt stayed. Sour Billy lay there for the longest time, his eyes closed, breathing ragged breaths that made his chest shake and scream. He couldn’t think of nothing but the blood that was seeping out of him, the deck hard against his face, and the smell. There was some awful smell, all around him. Finally Sour Billy recognized it. He had gone and shit in his pants. He couldn’t feel nothing, but he could smell it. He began to cry.

Finally Sour Billy Tipton could not cry anymore. His tears had dried up, and it hurt too much. It hurt awful bad. He tried to think about something else, about something besides the pain, so it would maybe leave him alone. Slowly it came back to him. Marsh and Joshua York, the shotgun going off in his face. They had come to hurt Julian, he remembered, and he had tried to stop them. Only this time he wasn’t fast enough. He tried to call out again. “Julian!” he called, a little louder than he had before, but still not very loud.

No answer. Sour Billy Tipton whimpered, and opened his eyes again. He had fallen, fallen all the way from the hurricane deck. He was on the forecastle, he saw. And it was daylight. Damon Julian couldn’t hear him. And even if he did, it was so bright, it was the morning, Julian wouldn’t come to him, Julian couldn’t come until dark. By dark he would be dead. “I’ll be dead by dark,” he said aloud, so softly he hardly heard it himself. He coughed and swallowed some more blood. “Mister Julian…” he said feebly.

He rested for a while, thinking, or trying to think. He was shot full of holes, he thought. His chest must be raw meat. He ought to be dead, Marsh had been standing right by him, he ought to be dead. Only he wasn’t. Sour Billy sniggered. He knew why he wasn’t dead. Shotguns couldn’t kill him. He was almost one of them now. It was like Julian had said. Sour Billy had felt it happening. Every time he looked in the mirror he thought he was a little whiter, and his eyes were getting more and more like Damon Julian’s, he could see it hisself, and he thought maybe he could see better in the dark this last year or two. It was the blood had done it, he thought. If only it hadn’t made him sick so much, he might be even further along. Sometimes it made him real sick, and he got bad cramps in his belly and threw up, but he kept on drinking it, like Julian said, and it was making him stronger. He could feel it sometimes, and this proved it, they’d shot him and he’d fallen and he wasn’t dead, no sir, he wasn’t dead. He was healing up, just like Damon Julian would. He was nearly one of them now. Sour Billy smiled, and thought that he would lie there until he was all healed, and then he would get up and go kill Abner Marsh. He could imagine how scared Marsh would be when he saw Billy coming, after the way he’d been shot.

If only he didn’t hurt so much. Sour Billy wondered if it hurt Julian this way, the day that damn dandy of a clerk had stuck the sword through him. Mister Julian had sure showed him. Billy would show a few people, too. He thought about that for a while, about all the things he would do. He would walk down Gallatin Street whenever he liked, and they’d all get real respectful, and he’d have himself beautiful high yaller girls and Creole ladies instead of whores from the dance halls, and when he was through with them he’d have their blood too, and that way no one else would have them, and that way they’d never laugh at him, not like the whores used to laugh at him sometimes, in the old bad days.

Sour Billy Tipton liked thinking about the way it was going to be. But after a time-a few minutes, a few hours, he wasn’t sure no more-he couldn’t. He kept thinking about the pain instead, the way it hurt so bad whenever he tried to breathe. It ought to be hurting less, he thought. But it wasn’t. And he was still bleeding bad, so bad he was starting to feel awful dizzy. If he was healing up, how come he was still bleeding? All of a sudden Sour Billy got afraid. Maybe he wasn’t far enough along yet. Maybe he wasn’t going to heal after all, and get up good as new, and go and get Abner Marsh. Maybe he was just going to bleed to death. He cried out, “Julian.” He cried as loud as he could. Julian could finish the change, could make him better, make him strong. If he could only get Julian it would be all right. Julian would bring him blood to make him strong, Julian would take care of him. Sour Billy knew that. What would Julian ever do without him? He called out again, screaming so hard that his throat almost burst with the pain.

Nothing. Silence. He listened for footsteps, for Julian or one of the others coming to help him. Nothing. Except… he listened harder. Sour Billy thought he heard voices. And one of them was Damon Julian’s! He could hear him! He felt weak with relief.