Vampires: The Recent Undead Part 22

I don't get the chance. Marshal Kelly and two deputies appear at the door to the saloon and Holliday pushes himself away from the bar to meet him. He lets them take his gun and cuff his hands behind his back. He doesn't look my way. Not once. He carries himself straight and tall and with quiet dignity as they lead him away.

Sunny Tom comes to stand beside me at the bar. "d.a.m.n girl. Are you crying?"

I swipe at tears and snot with the back of my hand. "Of course not." I look around. "The excitement doesn't seem to have hurt business."

"Nope." He leans his elbows back on the bar and rests a foot on the copper rail. "Think we'll see Holliday again?"

"Of course. I told him he'd better come back the minute he's out of jail."

"And n.o.body disobeys one of your orders, do they?"

"Not if they're smart. I figure between all the legal wrangling and the trial, he should be walking through that door in six months at the outside."

Sunny Tom shakes his head. "Hope you're right. I'd hate to see you get your heart broke."

"What heart?"

One of the girls calls for Tom and he leaves me with a pat on the arm.

But I know.

Holliday will be acquitted and he'll come back.

He has to.

Turns out I am right and I am wrong.

Doc Holliday is acquitted. A jury agrees that Billy Allen spent the morning he was shot walking up and down Main Street telling everyone that he was out for Holliday's blood. They reasoned it would have been foolish on Holliday's part not to be prepared to counter force with force.

But I am wrong about something else. I am wrong about the most important part. I am wrong that Holliday will come back to me.

He never does.

For some weeks, I follow his story in the newspaper. How during the trial, Holliday's health deteriorated. How when it was over, he headed south for Glenwood Springs, to partake of medicinal waters found there that are said to relieve the suffering of consumptives. How somewhere along the way, he picked up a traveling companion.

At that point, I stop reading the stories. Stop waiting for him to appear. Stop making plans for when he does. It is finally clear that whatever we shared those brief hours six months before meant far more to me than it did to him.

Sunny Tom and I continue to run our saloon. We know it won't be long before we have to move on. The silver veins are petering out and prices are falling. In preparation we begin h.o.a.rding more and more of our take.

On November 14, 1887, I come downstairs to find Sunny Tom having breakfast at his usual table, the Leadville Carbonate Chronicle spread out in front of him. His hand stills and his eyes grow round as he reads.

I pour myself a cup of coffee and came round to join him. What's wrong?

He looks up at me, pity reflected in his expression. It's an emotion quite alien to his usually gruff nature. I raise an eyebrow in surprise.

He turns the paper around so that I see what sparked the reaction.

It is Doc Holliday's obituary.

I thrust it away. I don't want to know.

Sunny Tom takes the paper back. "You should at least hear this, " he says aloud. He settles the paper on the table and begins to read: "There is scarcely one in the country who had acquired a greater notoriety than Doc Holliday, who enjoyed the reputation of being one of the most fearless men on the frontier, and whose devotion to his friends in the climax of the fiercest ordeal was inextinguishable. It was this, more than any other faculty, that secured for him the reverence of a large circle who were prepared on the shortest notice to rally to his relief."

He meets my gaze across the table. "He was a good man. It's all right to grieve."

No. I won't grieve any human. It's pointless. They die. We do not.

I push myself away from the table, turning to flee back upstairs when a man from the stage office appears at the saloon doors.

"Can I help you?" I ask.

He has a small package in his hand. "I'm looking for Rose Sullivan."

"I am she."

He holds the package out to me. "This came for you on the morning stage."

I fish a coin from my pocket and press it into his palm as I accept the package.

Sunny Tom asks from his table, "Sir, would you like a drink?"

I don't wait for the answer, but seat myself at a table in the far corner to examine the package. It's wrapped in plain brown paper, my name and Hyman's Saloon, Leadville, printed in block letters on the top. There is no indication of who it's from.

But something inside me knows. My hands tremble as I tear at the paper, fumble the top off the tiny box inside.

A diamond winks up at me.

Under it, a note. "For Rose. To remember me by. John Holliday."

Leadville Present Day A chiming tone from my computer brings me back with a start. I have an instant message coming in from my friends at the museum in New York. They tell me they miss me and ask how I'm doing and when I'm coming back.

We know you won't last in b.u.mf.u.c.kville six months, one of them writes. Rose Sullivan living in a ghost town? Never gonna work.

My fingers play with the small diamond pendant I've worn around my neck for over a hundred years. Holliday was the first and only man I ever considered offering immortality. If he'd come back after his trial, maybe he'd be seated beside me right now, adding his own words to mine.

My face is wet with tears I haven't shed in as long. I am surprised how the memory of a man I knew only a few hours has power still to touch me. Or is it this place? Was coming back here a mistake?

Deep inside, I know it's not.

My fingers begin to move over the keyboard. Doc Holliday is here with me. I hear his voice, see his face and the words flow.

This will be more than a novel.

This will be the way it could have been. This will be our story.

Author's Note: I've telescoped time and circ.u.mstances to fit this story. Doc Holliday spent most of the last years of his life in Leadville, Colorado before dying in Glenwood Springs in 1887. The shooting of Billy Allen, the opening of Tabor Opera House, Hyman's Saloon are all part of the Leadville Holliday would have known during his stay. I've taken the liberty to reorder time so that what actually took place over years, takes place in one.

Holliday always wore a diamond stickpin given him by his mother. When he died, the pin was found in his effects. The diamond was not.

WASTE LAND.

Stephen Dedman.

As we know, those who hunt vampires do not always meet with success and Stephen Dedman provides a frightening first-person narrative that puts the reader uncomfortably into a very tight place indeed. At least one has the "comfort" of poetry.

Dedman is the author of four novels, a nonfiction book, and more than one hundred and twenty published short stories (some of which are gathered on his two collections). He teaches creative writing at the University of Western Australia and is co-owner of the Fantastic Planet bookshop in Perth. His website is www.stephendedman.com.

The trunk is small, but so am I, and small places have never scared me all that badly. And dark, of course, but darkness is bearable. At least it isn't airtight. I hope. Maybe it only feels as though I can't breathe. Rats, rats I'm scared of, but there's no way a rat could squeeze in. My nerves are bad, but if the darkness gets too bad, there's a light in my watch-not a bright light, but at least it lets me know what time it is. I've set the alarm for seven; the sun should be well and truly up by then, and I'll be safe.

I wish I knew what sort of vampires they all are. You can't trust the movies to get these things right. Russian vampires have purple faces. Mexican vampires have fleshless skulls. Albanian vampires are supposed to wear high-heeled shoes. Bulgarian vampires have one nostril, and they've been eaten inside by some sort of fungus, so they're solid but squishy the whole way through, and they don't cast shadows. German vampires, nosferatu, control rats and so bring the Black Death, as though I don't have enough to worry about already. But they all drink blood, and most of them sleep through the day. Bavarian vampires are supposed to sleep with their thumbs crossed and one eye open, though I've never found any like that.

Hammering a stake through the heart isn't always enough to kill one, and different books have different ideas about what sort of wood you're supposed to use, or whether iron works. Romanians recommend driving iron forks through the heart and eyes, then re-burying the body face downwards-and there's always a body, none of the ones we've killed ever disintegrated into a handful of dust. Decapitation always seems to work, and burning them is good, if you can get a fire hot enough to cremate them. The Bulgarian vampires burn beautifully, like marshmallows, though they smell more like car tires.

The Poles say that if you impale or decapitate a vampire, they scream horribly and blood gushes out until it fills the grave, all of which is true; even the Bulgarians bleed. The Poles also say that if you mix flour with this blood and bake it into bread and eat it, vampires will never persecute you again. We drew lots and three of us tried it, two didn't, as a control, but the myth seems to have been garbled, as myths often are. Vampires weren't able to touch those of us who'd eaten the bread, but Clark was ripped apart by dogs, and someone with a crossbow killed Marie. Of course, that might not have been a vampire, the sun was up and there may be other humans left alive, hunters like us who mistook her for a vampire, or Quislings, Renfields . . . but if there are, they're doing a good job of hiding from us, even during the day. That's really why I'm staying here in Amsterdam, even after a Bulgarian got Jack, the faint hope of finding other humans. Going on alone is . . .

I hear sounds of movement from outside the trunk, and keep my breathing as quiet as possible. I don't know how well vampires hear.

We were in Moscow, eight of us, when it began. Or ended. Four of us made it across Germany; we'd hoped that the NATO bases might have been well enough fortified to hold out, that maybe there'd be an airlift to somewhere safe. It was probably only b.l.o.o.d.y-mindedness that kept us walking into the sunset (they've blocked most of the roads) after that. With Marie dead and Jack probably turned, maybe I'll stay here. When there were three of us, or even two, one could sleep while the other kept watch, and we kept each other sane by talking about our dissertations, poetry, folklore, things that had mattered to us once. Jack was doing his thesis on Eliot's poems, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," "The Waste Land," "Portrait of a Lady," he was fanatical about them and quoted them as though they were a prayer to keep the vampires away, keeping himself sane and driving the rest of us crazy. Now he's out there somewhere, probably looking for me, like the rest of them, it's as though they can smell me, the only fresh blood for miles . . . unless that's how the bread works, making me smell like a vampire, I've never seen any sign of them harming each other, they may be even more civilised than we were in that way, but I don't even know whether they've kept any of their memories, as some of the legends say, or whether they're just smart animals, I've never heard one Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak.

"The Waste Land." Jesus, he's got me doing it now. But it's true, I've never heard them speak. Maybe they don't need to speak to each other, maybe they use telepathy or something to communicate with each other, sounds that living humans can't hear, heat vision, or pheromones, they must have a strong sense of smell. I press the b.u.t.ton on my watch. Only nine twenty-one. I should sleep, but I can't. Not since the Bulgarian took Jack; if I'd managed to wake him, we might have both gotten away . . .

Even if they can't feed on me, they can still kill me, which is fair in its way, because we've killed as many of them as we could.

What is that noise? Movement. Something in the room, almost heavy enough to be human. A Bulgarian, maybe; they're light, not having any bones, they don't make much noise when they walk, oh Jesus, it just b.u.mped against the trunk . . .

Silence. Maybe it was just a dog-maybe not even one of their dogs. Or another sort of animal. At least it didn't sound like rats. Maybe it was the wind. Maybe there was nothing there at all, nothing; maybe I was falling asleep and beginning to dream but I'm not going to open the lid and look out just in case it is one of them and oh Jesus the trunk just moved, it was lifted off the floor- I stay quiet. If it opens the trunk, I'll try to get away. I have a cross, but they're not all scared of crosses, either, or garlic, or mirrors, or roses, or anything else we've been able to find. We tried staying in a church once, in Krakow, and they came in. We stayed in a brothel in Hamburg, mirrors everywhere, and they came in. Maybe I could have found a safer place than this junk shop, but I needed food-canned food, stuff that the rats and roaches haven't gotten to yet, and I saw this place opposite a supermarket, saw the trunk in the window, and opened it in case there was a vampire inside.

The trunk lurches; I'm being carried . . . somewhere. I didn't see any ca.n.a.ls within walking distance, and the vampires have wrecked anything that could be used as a crematorium. Oh Jesus, what if they bury me alive-I draw a deep breath, slowly, quietly, and try to stay calm, wondering if they can smell fear, like dogs. I try to distract myself by reciting poetry, but all I can think of is b.l.o.o.d.y Eliot- I hear laughter, and the trunk is dropped. We haven't gone far, just around a few corners, halfway around the block maybe, or out behind the shop . . . Something says, in Jack's voice but not Jack's voice, if he's become a Bulgarian then his jaw and his teeth and his larynx must be turning to mush: "Stay with me.

"Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak.

"What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?

"I never know what you are thinking. Think."

I'm about to open the lid, but I hear scurrying, tiny claws, a faint sound of chewing . . .

I think we are in rat's alley, where the dead men lost their bones.

A Gentleman of the Old School.

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro.

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's Count Saint-Germain was the first truly "good guy" romantic vampire. The books and stories of the Saint-Germain Cycle combine historical fiction, romance, and horror and feature the heroic vampire first introduced in Hotel Transylvania (1978) as Le Comte de Saint-Germain. In that first novel, the character-cultured, well-traveled, articulate, elegant, and mysterious-appears in the court of France's King Louis XV. Since then, Yarbro has presented-in a non-chronological manner and with name variations suitable to language, era, locale, and circ.u.mstance-the Count's life and undeath from 2119 BC and (as the story included here shows) into the twenty-first century. (Roger, the houseman in "A Gentleman of the Old School," became the vampire's right-hand ghoul in Rome in AD 71.) An Embarra.s.sment of Riches has just been published; Commedia della Morte will be the twenty-third novel in the series. (With two short story collections, that makes them numbers twenty-four and twenty-five, respectively, in the Chronicles as a whole.) Chelsea Quinn Yarbro is the first woman to be named a Living Legend by the International Horror Guild (2006). She was honored in 2009 with a Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award by the Horror Writers a.s.sociation. Yarbro was named as Grand Master of the World Horror Convention in 2003. She is the recipient of the Fine Foundation Award for Literary Achievement (1993) and (along with Fred Saberhagen) was awarded the Knightly Order of the Brasov Citadel by the Transylvanian Society of Dracula in 1997. She has been nominated for the Edgar, World Fantasy, and Bram Stoker Awards and was the first female president of the Horror Writers a.s.sociation. The author of scores of novels in many genres, her ma.n.u.scripts are being archived at Bowling Green University.

"But surely the Count is willing to talk to the press? He's been very generous, and I would have thought he'd want to make sure people know about it." The reporter was a crisply attractive woman in her mid-twenties, bristling with high fashion and ambition; she was hot on the scent of a story. She lingered in the door of the somewhat secluded house in an elegant section of Vancouver, a tape recorder in one hand, a small digital camera in the other. "And there is the problem of the murder, isn't there? The VPMNC audience wants to know."

The houseman-a lean, middle-aged man with sandy hair and faded-blue eyes, roughly the same height as the reporter: about five-foot seven-remained unfailingly polite. "I am sorry, but my employer has a p.r.o.nounced dislike of all public attention, even if the intention is benign." He nodded to the young woman once. "I am sure there are many on the hospital board who will be delighted to give you all the information you seek. As to the murder, you should speak to the police-they will know about it."

"Everyone's talked to them, and there's nothing new to get out of them," the reporter complained. "Everyone's looking for a new angle on the case, and the Center was a good place to start. That led me to the Count, and I only found out about the Count through the Donations Administrator's secretary, and that was over a very expensive lunch." She frowned. "I was told that the Count only visited the facilities twice: shortly after construction began and just before it was opened: The Vancouver Center for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Blood Disorders. Ms. Saunders said the Count's donation covered more than seventy percent of the cost of building and equipping the facility, and that he provides an annual grant for on-going research. That's got to be a lot of money. I was wondering if the Count would care to confirm the amount? Or discuss the body found on the roof of the Center two days ago?"

"Neither is the sort of matter my employer likes to talk about. He is not inclined to have his fortune bruited about, and the investigation of crime is not his area of expertise. He leaves such things to the police and their investigators." The houseman stepped back, preparing to close the door.

"Then he's talked to them?" the reporter pursued.

"A crime scene technician named Fisk has asked for various samples from the Count, and he has provided them." The houseman started to swing the door shut.

"Fisk-the new tech?"

"That was his name. I have no idea if he is new or old to his position. If you will excuse me-" There was less than three inches of opening left.

"I'll just return, tonight or tomorrow, and I may have some of my colleagues with me: I am not the only one with questions." This last was a bluff: she was relishing the chance for an exclusive and was not about to give up her advantage to any compet.i.tion.

"You will receive the same answer whenever you call, Ms. . . . is it Barradis? If you want useful information, I would consult the police, Ms. Barradis." The houseman lost none of his civility, but he made it clear that he would not change his mind.

"Barendis," she corrected. "Solange Barendis."

"Barendis," the houseman repeated, and firmly closed the door, setting the door-crossing bolt into its locked position before withdrawing from the large entry-hall, bound for the parlor on the west side of the house that gave out on a deck that was added to the house some fifty years before. It had recently been enlarged to make the most of the glorious view afforded down the hill, colored now with the approaching fires of sunset.

The house had been built in 1924 in the Arts and Crafts style, with cedar wainscoting in most of the rooms, and stained gla.s.s in the upper panes of many of the windows, all in all, a glorious example of the style, for although it did not appear to be large from the outside, it had three stories, and thirteen rooms, all of generous proportions. The parlor, with its extensive bow windowand the deck beyond provided the appearance of an extension of the room through two wide French doors into the outside, making it one of Roger's favorite places in all the house. Here he lingered until a beautiful Victorian clock chimed five; then he started toward the stairs that led to the upper floors, to the room on the south side of the second floor, a good-sized chamber that once held a pool table but was now devoted to books. He went along to the library and tapped on the door, opening it as soon as the occupant of the room called out, "Do come in, Roger."

Roger opened the door and paused on the threshold, watching his employer, who was dressed in black woolen slacks and black cashmere turtleneck, up a rolling ladder where he busied himself shelving books at the tops of the cases. "The reporter was back." The French he spoke was a in a dialect that had not been heard for more than two centuries.

"Ms. Barendis?" the Count asked. "I'm not surprised to hear it. I'm a little puzzled that she hasn't brought more press with her, considering."

"She has threatened to do so. She said she was asking about the Center, but it-"

The Count sighed. "She had another topic in mind, I suspect."

"You mean the body they found?" Roger knew what the response would be.

"That, and her reporter's inclination to uncover information that appears to be hidden."

"Such as the size of your donation to the Blood Center; a legitimate story as well as a workable excuse to talk to you to find out about the murder victim," said Roger, a bit disgusted. "She asked about the money as well as about the body."

"I doubt she will pursue the money: it isn't scandalous enough. The murder is more intriguing than money, since it appears to be one of a series," said the Count dryly. "Even the Canadians are fascinated by human predators, it would seem."