She was still very pale and obviously in great need of the surgery, but her voice was stronger when she spoke. Her eyes, at first unfocused, found Lawson. “Am I…guh…guh…gonna die?”
“No. We’ll be getting you to the hospital in Helena very soon. Just hang on a little longer.”
She gave a small laugh that must have hurt, because she winced. Then she said, “If there’s…anything Ca…Ca…Cassie Fredricks can d…do…it’s h…h…hang on.”
“Cassie,” Lawson said quietly, and he put a hand on her forehead. “That’s my daughter’s name.”
With an effort, she moved her head away. “Ohhhh,” she whispered, “your h…hand’s so c…cold.”
“I’m sorry,” he told her. He had forgotten for a moment what he was. He waited until she slept again, and then he stood up. He saw Deuce Mathias sitting on the remnant of a seat toward the front, bent over with his hands to his face, and he crunched across the debris of timbers and glass to the man, who looked up when he heard someone coming.
Lawson leaned down close, and he saw Mathias’s face tighten with fear.
“When we reach Helena,” Lawson said, “you are going to start walking. Go in any direction you please, but never look back.” He held up a finger when Mathias started to speak. “Don’t question. Consider your life from this point on to be a second chance. I think you’ve earned it. Shut,” he said when again Mathias opened his mouth, and then Lawson turned away before good sense and a reward for a common killer changed his mind.
It didn’t take much longer before Achilles Godfrey and Easterly returned to the car. Steam had begun to billow along the tracks. Some of it would be coming into the car, along with the wind and the snow and coalsparks, but Lawson doubted that anyone would complain too much about their open-air condition as long as the car held together. Easterly went back to again stand watch over Cassie Fredricks. Ann sat alone with her thoughts. Deuce Mathias sat alone with a new future ahead of him and a past night that he knew no one on earth would believe. The bodies of Keene Presco, Johnny Rebinaux, Glorious George Gantt and the skin of Jack Tabberson had joined the dead vampires in the wooded embankment below the tracks, and this was an area where the predators were always hungry.
“I have questions,” Godfrey said to Lawson. “Do you have any idea why this filth gathered in such numbers here, and why they went to such effort? I doubt they were after only the humans.”
“They want me, and my friend Ann.”
“Decidedly so. And why might that be? Do you pose a particular threat to them?”
“Resistance is a threat,” said Lawson.
“Yes, but…is there anything more I should know? Evidently they hold you and your friend in dangerous regard. The bullets you were using…what of those?”
“Silver bullets blessed with holy water by a priest.”
“Ah. So you’ve discovered a better way to kill them than with shotgun blast and axeblade?”
Lawson was a little late in answering, so the major went on. “I believe we should meet again. In fact, I insist upon it. I’d like to hear your story. Where might I find you?”
Lawson retrieved his wallet and gave him one of the plain white cards. Beneath Lawson’s name and the address of the Hotel Sanctuaire was the line All Matters Handled. And below that…
“I travel by night,” Godfrey read. “Were you trying to be humorous?”
“No. Realistic.”
“Well…New Orleans is a distance and I too would be forced to travel by night. But I think it would be a journey worth taking. There are not many of us who fight against this, Trevor. We need to form our own army, and we need a plan of battle.”
“Agreed.”
“I’ll visit you there. When, I’m not sure. But soon.” Godfrey put the card away in a pocket of his jacket. Was he smiling, or was this just the wound of his face? “I do recall Antietam,” he said. “The night I was taken. And the one who turned me. Oh yes, I do remember her.”
“Her?”
“A woman who calls herself LaRouge. A very beautiful monster, Trevor. This is who I search for, and you can believe I’ll never give up. Do you know the myth?”
Lawson was unable to speak.
“The myth…that consuming the ichor of the one who has turned you will turn you back to being fully human again? Is it a myth, or is it truth? I don’t know, but I do know that I want to die as a human, and nothing on God’s Heaven or in Satan’s Hell will stop me from finding that monster and draining every drop of ichor from her body. She is mine to kill.” Godfrey put a hand on Lawson’s shoulder. “That keeps me going, Trevor. It keeps me wanting to live. But as you must know, I was always inflamed by the idea of revenge.”
“Yes,” said Lawson, and it was the only word he could think to say.
“I will see you in New Orleans. You may count on that. And then I shall be ready to lead our army into a war we must win.” Did the eyes spark, or was it a shine of madness?
“Goodbye for now, Captain,” said Major Godless, who gave the soldier from Alabama a brief salute before he went out the door beyond which the silent Smoke was waiting. They drifted off together, along with the other figures that moved through the snow.
The train gave a lurch. The iron wheels turned. The damaged car squealed and cried out, but it held together as the locomotive rolled onward through where a pile of boulders had been, with a little boy perched on the biggest one.
Lawson had to sit down, before he fell.
The last train from Perdition was going home.