Heather Graham - Night of the Vampires

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?”

A knock at the back door stalled any answer she might have been able to dream up.