“He’s not here,” he said finally.
“I’ll wait,” I said and began walking towards the room. He moved alarmingly fast thrusting himself between me and the room, but he didn’t say anything. I reached by him and opened the door. It was dark and empty inside. “I’m not waiting out here with you. At that he snapped his fangs at me, and his eyes blazed but he stepped aside to let me in.
The room was dark and cooler than the rest of the house, but light filtered in through the walls and a window at one end of the room. The window looked out at cottages set respectfully back from the farmhouse. A few stragglers hurried down the dirt lane towards the front door. I lit one of the candles with a match that I carried in my pocket then lit a cigarette that one of the villagers had given me. It tasted stale but I puffed it regardless as I wasted sitting in a narrow stiff backed chair across from my brother’s desk I’d just finished the cigarette grinding the butt out in an ashtray on Benjamin’s desk when he walked in. He didn’t greet me except with a grunt as he threw a leather jacket into a corner, then he sat down behind his desk and looked at me with cold searching eyes. I almost laughed. It appeared that he was putting on airs of disappointment.
“Well, what is it? Perhaps you want to try to get useful information out of your vampire friend again? You’ve been nothing but trouble since you’ve got here, although no doubt you’re oblivious to it all. It’s only through the great love that I bear our mother that I am allowing you to remain here.”
My jaw tightened and my mouth tasted of bile. I thought that I might strike him but then I remembered Mary’s terrified face and the Preacher’s beady narrowed eyes staring at her.
“I have a confession to make.”
“Oh ho,” he said softly leaning forward. “Now we get to the crux of the matter.”
“I haven’t been able to confess this before because I was too frightened but now, I see that the General cannot reach me here no matter what he says.”
My brother smiled. “You’re damn right he can’t,” he said.
“Everything that the vampire and I have told you about the General’s strength is a lie. He sent us here to undermine you. He promised that if I delivered the message of his strength to you and dissuaded you from expanding your range that I’d go free, but if not, the vampire would drain me.”
My brother’s eyes glittered, and a slight smile flickered and then disappeared on his face. It was the expression an animal makes when you hold out food for it and it tentatively approaches you, greedily eying the food but warily waiting for the trap to spring. It made him look like a weasel. A cunning creature but one frozen with the inability to choose between its options.
I went on. “He thought that you’d be frightened into cutting a deal with him in order to avoid his false wrath. His vampire army is nothing more than a ragtag bunch that scarcely obeys him and is ill armed. Despite what his vamp says they’re low on fuel and ammo and the majority of his vampires are weak and irrational from lack of blood. They would turn on their master in an instant and would flee a stronger force.”
“How many are there?” he asked.
“In St. Louis, a hundred or so hardened soldiers and a few thousand weak vampires, hangers-on subsisting off scraps. Between here and there scattered camps of less than that. Those are isolated and bored. The General’s strength is failing. It’s only a matter of time before the whole thing crumbles. Of course, a good kick could hasten the process.”
He leaned back in his chair and put his heavy boots up on the desk. A bit of dark mud fell onto the wooden surface and splattered. He stared wistfully off into the distance unaware of the touch of grin that was rising to his cheeks.
“It’s only been what five, six years since I’ve been up here, but it seems longer. Five years of cold. I think of the lands we used to rove. Warm lands where we could have gone around naked if we chose. Lands where crops can grow late into the year. Here once you’ve survived one winter, you’ll never get warm again. It seeps into you and you can’t get it out no matter how much you bask in the warmth of the short summer’s sun. The wind finds you no matter where you hide. It will find you by the fire and it will find you in the bed with your love and it will leave your joints aching and your skin burning. It sets me to dreaming about the south. Our people need it. Our people deserve it.”
He was silent for a time and I wondered what I should say. I thought that I had said enough but would the Preacher see it that way and more importantly how would he know that I’d done as he’d asked?
“You know even less about this place then I did when I came here. I imagine you’ve heard some tall tales about my journey north.” When I shook my head, he continued. “When I came north, I just wandered aimlessly as we’d always done. I only tried to keep moving away from that horrible scene and you, the destroyer of all we had in the world. I
