Fevre Dream Page 0,99

chuckled again.

Abner Marsh scratched the match on the wall, and blinked. Hairy Mike was standing over the bed, his iron in hand. The business end was smeared and wet. The thing beneath the sheet had a staved-in red ruin for a face. Half the top of its skull had been taken away, and a slow trickle of blood was soaking into the sheet. Bits of hair and other dark stuff were spattered on the pillow and the wall and Hairy Mike's clothes. "Is he dead?" Marsh asked, suddenly and wildly suspicious that the smashed-in head would begin to knit itself together, and the pale corpse would rise and smile at them.

"I ain't never seen nuthin' deader," said Hairy Mike.

"Make sure," Abner Marsh ordered. "Make damn sure."

Hairy Mike Dunne shrugged a big, slow shrug, and raised his bloody iron and brought it down again onto skull and pillow. A second time. A third. A fourth. When it was over, the thing hardly could be said to have a head at all. Hairy Mike Dunne was an awful strong man.

The match burned Marsh's fingers. He blew it out. "Let's go," he said harshly.

"What'll we do with him?" Hairy Mike asked.

Marsh pulled open the cabin door. The sun and the river were before him, a blessed relief. "Leave him there," he said. "In the dark. Come nightfall, we'll chuck him in the river." The mate followed Marsh outside, and he locked the door behind him. He felt sick. He leaned his ample bulk up against the boiler deck railing, and struggled to keep from heaving over the side. Blood-sucker or not, what they'd gone and done to Damon Julian was terrible to behold.

"Need help, Cap'n?"

"No," said Marsh, He straightened himself with an effort. The morning was already hot, the yellow sun above beating down on the river with an almighty vengeance. Marsh was drenched with sweat. "I ain't had much sleep," he said. He forced a laugh. "I ain't had none, in fact. It takes a bit out of a man, too, what we just done."

Hairy Mike shrugged. It hadn't taken much out of him, it seemed. "Go sleep,"he said.

"No," said Marsh. "Can't. Got to go see Joshua, tell him what we done. He's got to know, so he'll be ready to deal with them others." All of a sudden Abner Marsh found himself wondering just how Joshua York would react to the brutal murder of one of his people. After last night, he couldn't think Joshua would be too bothered, but he wasn't sure-he didn't really know the night folks and how they thought, and if Julian had been a baby-killer and a blood-sucker, well, the rest of them had done things near as bad, even Joshua. And Damon Julian had been Joshua's bloodmaster too, the king of the vampires. If you kill a man's king-even a king he hates-ain't he obliged to do something about it? Abner Marsh remembered the cold force of Joshua's anger, and with that memory found himself none too eager to go rushing on up to the captain's cabin on the texas, especially now, when Joshua would be at his worst once roused. "Maybe I can wait," Marsh found himself saying. "Sleep a little."

Hairy Mike nodded.

"I got to get to Joshua first, though," Marsh said. He really was feeling sick, he thought: nauseated, feverish, weary. He had to go lie down for a couple hours. "Can't let him get up." He licked his lips, which were dry as sandpaper. "You go talk to Jeffers, tell him how it come out, and one of you come and fetch me before sunset. Well before, you hear? Give me at least an hour to go on up and speak to Joshua. I'll wake him up and tell him, and then when it gets dark he'll know how to handle the other night folks. And you... you have one of your boys keep a sharp eye on Sour Billy... we're goin' to have to deal with him, too."

Hairy Mike smiled. "Let the river deal with him."

"Maybe we will," said Marsh. "Maybe. I'm going to go rest now, but make sure I'm up before dark. Don't you go let it get dark on me, you understand?"

"Yep."

So Abner Marsh climbed wearily up to the texas, feeling sicker and more tired with every step. Standing at the door of his own cabin, he felt a sudden stab of fear-what if one of them should be inside after all, despite what Mister Jeffers had said?