'This is my town,' Owens said, his hand still heavy on Quincey's shoulder. 'I took it, and I mean to keep it.'
Quincey opened his mouth. A gout of blood bubbled over his lips. He couldn't find words. Only blood, rushing away, running down his leg, spilling over his lips. It seemed his blood was everywhere, rushing wild, like once-still waters escaping the rubble of a collapsed dam.
He sagged against Owens. The big man laughed.
And then the big man screamed.
Quincey's teeth were at Owens' neck. He ripped through flesh, tore muscle and artery. Blood filled his mouth, and the Peacemaker thundered again and again in his hand, and then Owens was nothing but a leaking mess there in his arms, a husk of a man puddling red, washing away to nothing so fast, spurting red rich blood one second, then stagnant-pool dead the next.
Quincey's gun was empty. He fumbled for his bowie, arming himself against Owens' compadres.
There was no need.
Mrs. Danvers stood over them, a smoking shotgun in her hands.
Quincey released Owens' corpse. Watched it drop to the floor.
'Let me get a look at you,' Mrs. Danvers said.
'There ain't no time for that,' he said.
Dracula chuckled. 'I can't believe it is you they sent. The American cowboy. The romantic.'
Quincey studied the count's amused grin. Unnatural canines gleamed in the moonlight. In the ruined wasteland of Carfax, Dracula seemed strangely alive.
'Make your play,' Quincey offered.
Icy laughter rode the shadows. 'There is no need for such melodrama, Mr. Morris. I only wanted the blood. Nothing else. And I have taken that.'
'That ain't what Seward says.' Quincey squinted, his eyes adjusting to the darkness. 'He claims you're after Miss Lucy's soul.'
Again, the laughter. 'I am a man of science, Mr. Morris. I accept my condition, and my biological need. Disease, and the transmission of disease, make for interesting study. I am more skeptical concerning the mythology of my kind. Fairy stories bore me. Certainly, powers exist which I cannot explain. But I cannot explain the moon and the stars, yet I know that these things exist because I see them in the night sky. It is the same with my special abilities-they exist, I use them, hence I believe in them. As for the human soul, I cannot see any evidence of such a thing. What I cannot see, I refuse to believe.'
But Quincey could see. He could see Dracula, clearer every second. The narrow outline of his jaw. The eyes burning beneath his heavy brow. The long, thin line of his lips hiding jaws that could gape so wide.
'You don't want her,' Quincey said. 'That's what you're saying.'
'I only want a full belly, Mr. Morris. That is the way of it.' He stepped forward, his eyes like coals. 'I only take the blood. Your kind is different. You want everything. The flesh, the heart, the…soul, which of course has a certain tangibility fueled by
your belief. You take it all. In comparison, I demand very little-'
'We take. But we give, too.'
'That is what your kind would have me believe. I have seen little evidence that this is the truth.' Red eyes swam in the darkness. 'Think about it, Mr. Morris. They have sent you here to kill me. They have told you how evil I am. But who are they-these men who brought me to your Miss Lucy? What do they want?' He did not blink; he only advanced. 'Think on it, Mr. Morris. Examine the needs of these men, Seward and Holmwood. Look into your own heart. Examine your needs.'
And now Quincey smiled. 'Maybe I ain't as smart as you, Count.' He stepped forward. 'Maybe you could take a look for me…let me know just what you see.'
Their eyes met.
The vampire stumbled backward. He had looked into Quincey Morris' eyes. Seen a pair of empty green wells. Bottomless green pits. Something was alive there, undying, something that had known pain and hurt, and, very briefly, ecstasy.
Very suddenly, the vampire realized that he had never known real hunger at all.
The vampire tried to steady himself, but his voice trembled. 'What I can see…I believe.'
Quincey Morris did not blink.
He took the stake from Seward's bag.
'I want you to know that this ain't something I take lightly,' he said.
FOUR
He'd drawn a sash around his belly, but it hadn't done much good. His jeans were stiff with blood, and his left boot seemed to be swimming with the stuff. That was his guess, anyway-there wasn't much more than a tingle of feeling in his left foot, and he wasn't going to stoop low and investigate.
Seeing himself in the mirror was bad enough. His face was so white. Almost like the count's.
Almost like her face, in death.
Mrs. Danvers stepped away from the coffin, tucking a pair of scissors into a carpet bag. 'I did the best I could,' she said.
'I'm much obliged, ma'am.' Quincey leaned against the lip of the box, numb fingers brushing the yellow ribbon that circled Lucy's neck.
'You can't see them stitches at all,' the whiskey-breathed preacher said, and the seamstress cut him off with a glance.
'You did a fine job, Mrs. Danvers.' Quincey tried to smile. 'You can go on home now.'
'If you don't mind, I think I'd like to stay.'
'That'll be fine,' Quincey said.
He turned to the preacher, but he didn't look at him. Instead, he stared through the parlor window. Outside, the sky was going to blood red and bruise purple.
He reached into the box. His fingers were cold, clumsy. Lucy's delicate hand almost seemed warm by comparison.
Quincey nodded at the preacher. 'Let's get on with it.'
The preacher started in. Quincey had heard the words many times. He'd seen people stand up to them, and he'd seen people totter under their weight, and he'd seen plenty who didn't care a damn for them at all.
But this time it was him hearing those words. Him answering them. And when the preacher got to the part about taking…
do you take this woman…Quincey said, 'Right now I just want to give.'
That's what the count couldn't understand, him with all the emotion of a tick. Seward and Holmwood, even Lucy's mother, they weren't much better. But Quincey understood. Now more than ever. He held tight to Lucy's hand.
'If you've a mind to, you can go ahead and kiss her now,' the preacher said.
Quincey bent low. His lips brushed hers, ever so gently. He caught a faint whiff of Mrs. Murphy's soap, no trace of garlic at all.
With some effort, he straightened. It seemed some time had passed, because the preacher was gone, and the evening sky was veined with blue-pink streaks.
The piano player just sat there, his eyes closed tight, his hands fisted in his lap. 'You can play it now,' Quincey said, and the man got right to it, fingers light and shaky on the keys, voice no more than a whisper:
'Come and sit by my side if you love me,
Do not hasten to bid me adieu,
But remember the Red River Valley,
And the cowboy who loved you so true.'
Quincey listened to the words, holding Lucy's hand, watching the night. The sky was going black now, blacker every second. There was no blood left in it at all.
Just like you, you damn fool, he thought.
He pulled his bowie from its sheath. Seward's words rang in his ears:
'One moment's courage, and it is done.'
But Seward hadn't been talking to Quincey when he'd said those words. Those words were for Holmwood. And Quincey had heard them, but he'd been about ten steps short of doing something about them. If he hadn't taken the time to discuss philosophy with Count Dracula, that might have been different. As it was, Holmwood had had plenty of time to use the stake, while Seward had done his business with a scalpel.
For too many moments, Quincey had watched them, too stunned to move. But when he did move, there was no stopping him.
He used the bowie, and he left Whitby that night.
He ran out. He wasn't proud of that. And all the time he was running, he'd thought,
So much blood, all spilled for no good reason. Dracula, with the needs of a tick. Holmwood and Seward, who wanted to be masters or nothing at all.
He ran out. Sure. But he came back. Because he knew that there was more to the blood, more than just the taking.
One moment's courage…
Quincey stared down at the stake jammed through his beloved's heart, the cold shaft spearing the blue-pink muscle that had thundered at the touch of his fingers. The bowie shook in his hand. The piano man sang:
'There never could be such a longing,
In the heart of a poor cowboy's breast,
As dwells in this heart you are breaking,
While I wait in my home in the West.'
