Fevre Dream Page 0,94
to howl. Blood spurted onto the table, over the crystal glasses and the silverware and the fine white linen. The baby's limbs thrashed feebly, and the blood began to pool. And Julian impaled the severed hand-it was so impossibly tiny, hardly the size of Marsh's big toe-on the blade of Billy's knife. He held it up, dripping, in front of Joshua York. "Drink," he said, and all the lightness was gone from his voice.
York slapped the knife aside. It spun from Julian's hand, the hand still impaled upon it, and landed six feet away on the carpet. Joshua looked like death. He reached down, put two strong fingers on either side of the infant's thrashing wrist, and pressed. The bleeding stopped. "Get me a cord," he commanded.
No one moved. The infant was still screaming.
"There is an easier way to quiet him," Julian said. He took his own hard pale hand and clamped it down across the child's mouth. The hand enveloped the small brown head completely, and stifled all sound. Julian began to squeeze.
"Release him!" shouted York.
"Look at me," said Julian. "Look at me, bloodmaster."
And their eyes met as they stood there above the table, each with a hand on the small brown piece of humanity before them.
Abner Marsh just sat there, thunderstruck, sick and furious and wanting to do something, but somehow unable to move. Like all the rest of them, he stared at York and Julian, at the strange, silent battle of wills.
Joshua York was trembling. His mouth was tight with anger, and cords stood up in his neck, and his gray eyes were as cold and forceful as an ice jam. He stood there like a man possessed, a pale wrathful god in white and blue and silver. It was impossible for anything to withstand that outpouring of will, of strength, Marsh thought. Impossible.
And then he looked at Damon Julian.
The eyes dominated the face: cold, black, malevolent, implacable. Abner Marsh looked into those eyes a moment too long, and suddenly he felt dizzy. He heard men screaming somewhere, distantly, and his mouth was warm with the taste of blood. He saw all the masks that were called Damon Julian and Giles Lamont and Gilbert d'Aquin and Philip Caine and Sergei Alexov and a thousand other men fall away, and behind each one was another, older and more horrible, layer on layer of them each more bestial than the last, and at the bottom the thing had no charm, no smile, no fine words, no rich clothing or jewels, the thing had nothing of humanity, was nothing of humanity, had only the thirst, the fever, red, red, ancient and insatiable. It was primal and inhuman and it was strong. It lived and breathed and drank the stuff of fear, and it was old, oh so old, older than man and all his works, older than the forests and rivers, older than dreams.
Abner Marsh blinked, and there across the table from him was an animal, a tall handsome animal in burgundy, and there was nothing the least bit human about it, and the lines of its face were the lines of terror, and its eyes-its eyes were red, not black at all, red, and lit from within, and red, burning, thirsting, red.
Joshua York released the infant's stump. A sudden pent-up wash of blood spurted feebly out across the table. An instant later a sound like a terrible wet crunch filled the saloon.
And Abner Marsh, still half-dazed, slid the long kitchen knife out of his boot and came out of his seat screaming, raving, slashing. Sour Billy tried to grab him from behind, but Marsh was too strong, too wild. He brushed Billy aside, and flung himself across the dinner table at Damon Julian. Julian broke away from Joshua York's eyes just in time, and pulled back slightly. The knife missed his eye by a fraction of an inch, and left a long open gash down the right side of his face. Blood welled out of the wound, and Julian made a snarling sound deep in his throat.
Then someone seized Marsh from behind and dragged him off the table and flung him backward across the grand saloon, lifted him and flung him, all three hundred pounds of him, like he was a small child. It hurt something fierce when he landed, but somehow Marsh managed to roll over and get back to his feet.
It was Joshua had thrown him, he saw, and Joshua who was standing closest to him now,