6
A strange calm settled over Crimson as she stepped forward and looked out past Welsh’s shoulder. The nimbus of the moon ignited the roiling clouds, and the entire sky glowered down like the fiery scowls of madmen.
Four of them out there at the edge of the jungle, with the torch light barely reaching their forms.
They wore only wet trousers that dripped and left puddles at their feet, and their ashen skin gleamed and glowed with sea water. Jaundiced eyes blazed. The warm night winds swept low and snapped against flesh as hard as bone.
“Who are they?” Crimson asked. Her heart thudded against her ribs as some delighted child’s voice inside her skull cried, At last! He’s here!
“Dead men,” Daphna answered. “They come out of the water.”
Welsh said, “Well, if it’s true, then those savages actually had call to pass them rumors.”
Crimson handed him a sharpened piece of ash wood and the iron pike. “Listen to me, goat, you’re about to get an earful and you’d better take heed.”
“I already know the wives’ tales, lass, and better than you, I’d wager. One fell swoop of a cutlass ought to do the job right, so I hear. I’ll take a bloke’s head off, if need be.”
“A stake through the unbeating heart. One blow, don’t miss your chance. And iron is a bane to them as well.”
He held the heavy metal pike up. “To us all, I’m thinkin’.”
She grabbed the iron rings. “These are supposed to work around the throat, keeps them from biting, it’s said. Strangles them.”
“You’ve been talkin’ to the wrong kind of people, lass.”
“Be glad that I have been or we might have no chance at surviving this night.”
“A sad waste of diamonds that’d be.”
“Are they coming yet?”
“No.”
She scanned the outlying jungle as that child inside her, giddy with delight, searched for Tyree in the shadows. The murdered men stood unmoving and cracks in the stones sipped at the ocean water trickling from their ragged cuffs.
“Why aren’t they attacking?” She turned to Daphna. “Tell me, girl, what you know of this, and be quick.”
Daphna spoke with no inflection. She continued caressing Villaine’s cheek as if he might awaken at any moment. Crimson kneeled beside her and patted her shoulder, taking a new tack. “Help us, Daphna. Explain what you can.”
With a languid motion the girl started gently rocking. The jutting piece of wood in her lover’s chest vibrated and new pulses of blood throbbed loose. “They said the tide brings in strange beings from the lower depths. They said these creatures come up in certain seasons, on special nights, and feed. Slowly at first, and then more often.”
“Is that what happened?”
“Villaine’s men became ill, one after the other. They lost all appetite for food and water. Their eyes and skin could not stand the searing light of tropical day. God, how I prayed. They grew hungry, and that unholy appetite drove them insane. The sight and smell of blood sent them into frenzy. Animal blood at first, and then, soon after, human blood.”
Welsh spat out into the soil and said, “If I didn’t know better myself, I’d swear the bastards were carved from the same rock as those steps. They haven’t twitched so much as an eyelid.”
“The sick men spoke of stealing the sloops,” Daphna said. “Of raiding other islands.”
A frigid thread of fear wove through Crimson, imagining the contamination spreading up through the Bahamas and into the Americas. “Did any leave? Is that why there are no ships here?”
“I don’t know. I’m not certain how many of the men were sick at the end, or how many of the healthy freebooters ran out before then. There were terrible struggles, friends pitted against one another. God forgive us for ever setting foot here.”
“It’s not your fault for falling in love. Even with a pirate.”
“Villaine knew of the superstitions and sought them out. He hunted his own men after they began to change. We thought Benbow was almost rid of all the creatures when more appeared, from out of the water. We’ve been fighting for days. Villaine was… taken captive. He soon showed signs of becoming ill.” Daphna began to shake free from shock and the flintlock finally dropped from her hand. “This evening, when the moon rose, he could battle his infection no longer and begged me to kill him. I did so, and was about to fire a shot into my own heart when you arrived.”
“We’ll get you off this damned piece of rock.”
“I can’t leave,” she said, “you see, I’ve fallen ill myself.”
Crimson saw no marks on the girl’s throat other than bruises and drew back, wondering how easy the sickness was to pass on. Daphna guessed her thoughts and drew down the collar of her dress, showing scabbed marks on her breast. Villaine had infected his own love.
“These creatures from the depths…did you see any of them? Were they men?”
“They’re calling to me.”
Welsh perked up. “Who? Them’s outside?”
“Those outside, yes. They want me.”
“Your parents want you more, I’ll wager,”
Crimson told her.
“I’m unclean.”
Those four, like standing pieces of the temple itself, awash in the gloating moonlight, drying in the wind. This dealing in blood hadn’t put any fat on them, for sure. Bodies were so skinny that their ribs stuck out sharp as knives. Their eyes sparked with loss and something like a sad lust. Crimson had to hold down a peculiar excitement within her, guessing at who else might be out there in the dark or floating in the dark waters between here and the
“Can you blokes talk?” Welsh called out. “Have you come about hopin’ to share me final pint of whiskey?”
“We’re leaving this island,” Crimson said to them, hoping they could still understand something of the human world. “Any of you fool enough to try to stop us will be sent straight to hell.”
The four appeared to move a bit, as if drawn back to earth from whatever walking perdition they suffered. “Give us…”
“You’ll be getting nothing from us, now move on!”
“…the woman.”
“They’re not such bad fellows,” Welsh said. “I’ve a feelin’ I’ve tipped a few tankards with them before.”
Crimson tried to calm herself but the frothing agitation kept right on bubbling up in her. Tyree visited her every night, and she felt he had to be out there now. Her hands quivered badly unless she tightened her grip on the ash wood until her knuckles cracked.
“Why do they want you?” she asked Daphna.
“Need you ask? For companionship.”
“But—”
“Even the dead… especially the dead…can be beset by loneliness.”
She let that pass for the time being. “When did they last feast?”
“What?”
“When did they last kill? Are they hungry?”
“We’re always hungry.”
Stepping forward, the four Daemonia Wampyros, these Blutsaugers, made their way across the community
