Barnabus Coffin found a fisherman’s skiff tied up at the foot of the wooden steps leading down from the pier. He seated himself between the thwarts, fitted the long slim oars into their tholes and waited for Kate to seat herself in the stern before he pulled out into the river. He rowed easily, with a sailor’s stroke, and they left the burning city behind them.
“They came out of nowhere,” said her friend as he rowed. “There were hundreds, maybe thousands, some of them with their children, most of them women. At first the ferryman said he didn’t take niggers on his boat, but my friend convinced him that taking them to safety was the right thing to do.” He bent his chin down toward the big Colt revolver stuck through his belt. “I told him I’d shoot his drays if he didn’t take them.”
The ferry in question was an old-fashioned barge powered by a team of horses walking a treadmill that turned a paddle wheel. “I don’t think he much liked me.” Barnabus grinned. “His name was O’Toole.” He laughed, still rowing hard. “I threw him over the side on the return trip so he wouldn’t give any more trouble.”
Kate watched over her friend’s shoulder. From the looks of it, Barnabus was heading for the Pennsylvania Railroad depot on the Jersey side. She looked into the dark, oily water of the North River, the local name for this part of the Hudson. There was debris floating and bodies too, most black but a few white as well, and more than one or two in army uniform, all moving sluggishly downstream on the tide. She turned and looked back over her shoulder.
The city was in flames from Maiden Lane to Washington Square and beyond. Broadway was the worst off by far, and Kate could see the flames like fiery pillars halfway across the river. She could hear the faint ringing of the fire reel bells, but she knew nothing would truly quench the flames of the rioters’ fury except musket balls and a bayonet’s point. She found herself thinking of young Echo Van Helsing and the monster she’d left her with who now didn’t seem such a monster after all. But if not him, who had killed that savaged streetwalker they’d seen on the slab in the dead house at Bellevue and all the others like her?
Kate put the dark thoughts out of her mind for the time being. The city was on fire and there was only one way to stop it being razed to the ground. She felt her journal in her pocket and had a sudden thought. She took it out along with her pencil and scribbled a quick message. She tore the page from the journal, folded it once and handed both the journal and the message to Barnabus. He took both, pausing briefly in his labors.
“What do I do with these?” he asked.
“What’s the quickest way to Gettysburg?”
“By rail?” Barnabus asked.
“Yes.”
The sailor thought for a moment, frowning. “North to Elmira, then the Gettysburg and Hancock or the B and O, doesn’t make much difference either way.”
“Then, do it,” said Kate. “Give the journal to our friend Johnny Jones the grave digger. Take the message to a colonel named Alan Sharp at the provost’s office in Gettysburg.”
“What about you?”
“I’ve got to send a message to the president; then I’m going back to the city.”
“You’re crazy, Kate; you can’t go back there!”
“I have to.”
“Where will I find you when I’m done?”
“Look for me on Minetta Street,” she answered. “Now, row!”
The Vampyr and Echo thundered across the city on a wagon whose reputed owner was only too glad to sell it for a pair of double eagles, which meant it was probably stolen in the first place and the horse thief was merely turning a quick profit before scuttling off to see what else he could loot in such an opportune environment. The Vampyr had brought nothing with him except the long item wrapped up in his cloak, and he’d made no further mention of their destination other than the name: Minetta Street.
It was no great distance to travel from the cathedral. In ordinary times it could have been accomplished by traveling west a few blocks to Broadway, then north to Great Jones Street and west again to the place where Sixth Avenue came to an end just above Carmine Street. But these were no ordinary times; Broadway was closed off by almost every fire brigade company in the city, and flaming debris from a dozen gigantic blazes blocked their path.
The Vampyr turned the wagon down Crosby Street instead, guiding the cart horse through the litter on the cobblestones. Crosby was well known for its saloons and brothels catering to blacks, but tonight all was dark, the windows shuttered. They turned again on Broome, finally crossing Broadway well below the worst of the fires, then headed north, threading a careful passage through the streets of the Fifth Ward and farther, into the Eighth.
Everywhere there was evidence of riot; it was as though the streets had been a battlefield. There was litter and broken glass everywhere, gas lamps, their mantles smashed, spouted huge naked flames like rows of immense torches. Carts and wagons were overturned, horses had been slaughtered and farm animals, sheep and pigs mostly, roamed in roving, aimless herds, the pigs snuffling their snouts into the bloated corpses of dead horses and human bodies.
At last they reached the shattered barricades where the occupants had made a foolish attempt to stem the riot’s tide. Someone had put some straw-filled mattresses and a manure wagon to the torch and they still smoldered, sending up a few small spikes of fire here and there as the hot summer breeze from the river fanned the flames. Now the street was abandoned.
Echo, still half in a trance, stared down the dark, narrow, sinister length of the curving street. Just at the curve she thought she saw movement, a shadowy, long cloak spread like the giant wings of a bat. On the cobbles other things moved. Small things with shining eyes.
“There’s something there,” she whispered.
“I know,” said the Vampyr. He reached behind the seat and pulled out his cloth-wrapped package. He unwrapped it and Echo’s eyes went wide. As the cloak was pulled away, it revealed a massive two-handed sword almost five feet in length, the pommel set with a bezel enclosing a dark stone speckled with red like tiny droplets of blood. The hilt was wrapped with heavy gold wire and the crosspiece was made of silver. The steel blade was sharpened on both edges and the runnel down the blade’s length was broad and ugly. The steel was strangely patterned down its length, like watered silk. Except for the stone in the pommel and the gold wire, the sword had no decoration.
“Damascus steel. Sharp enough to cut the Devil’s tongue in two and made by Voelundr, or so I was told. I took it from a heretic Cathar knight in 1209,” said the Vampyr. “He had called himself Adam-Roger de Carcasonne back then. He told me he regretted losing the weapon. I’m here to give it back to him.” The Vampyr dropped down from the wagon and held his hand out for Echo.
“Is there a purpose to my presence?” asked the young woman.
“Of course,” the Vampyr answered, handing her down to the ground. “I need your good heart and the black-glass dagger of your father’s if I am to sleep peacefully when the sickness takes me. If you do not come I will almost certainly fail, and any chance we have of saving your brother will vanish.”
She stared up at the pale figure standing beside her. He held the massive sword almost casually in his hand, the blade half pointing down the shadowed, twisting alley. “All right,” she said at last. “For Matthew,” she whispered.
And they stepped around the smoldering barricade and entered the narrow, cobbled passage.
The building was a rat’s nest of rooms, most of them windowless. The halls were barely wide enough to let two people pass. The rooms were further subdivided and rented out so that sometimes a hundred people lived in a building designed for twenty.
They came down the narrow hallways and through the doorways like wraiths in ragged blue, their eyes bright red and half glowing in the darkness. Their terrible gaping mouths hung open on impossibly hinged jaws, shining fangs like splintered, freshly polished piano keys, tongues like bloated, coiled worms writhing within bloody mouths.
They screeched and screamed as they crowded toward Echo Van Helsing. She cringed in terror at their approach, huddling back against the passage wall while in front of her the great sword swung and lunged and hacked as Enoch Bale cut a swath through the raging host of Damphyr who stood between him and his objective. He decapitated some and others he simply cut through the middle, hacking at heads and arms and legs, splitting skulls down through chins, blood gushing upward and everywhere, splashing the walls in long splashes, filling the corridor with a foul odor as the creatures’ bowels released. A fallen torch sputtered against the floor; then flames began to lick at the layers of dry wallpaper. Soon the corridor behind them was on fire and the wretched tenement began to burn.
“Come!” the Vampyr ordered, and Echo followed as the Vampyr cut a murderous path through the wretched creatures, slipping and sliding on their offal. She clutched her father’s dagger in her hand. Her face was spattered with the Damphyrs’ blood, half blinding her, the stench of their torn flesh choking her and making her vomit. Even through all of that she realized that they were all wearing uniforms or parts of them, some blue, some gray, all red now, their draining blood making them all allies.
“Caedite eos! Kill them all!” cried the Vampyr, echoing the famous crusaders’ call against the heretics. He finally reached the end of the hallway and found the cellar door. He kicked it open with one booted foot and turned to Echo. “He’s here!”
He plunged downward into the darkness.
Echo Van Helsing screamed. Deep in the half-flooded cellars of the slumping, dangerously tilted structure above their heads she’d found her brother Matthew, bound to a pair of old beams lashed together in an X, his head hanging upside down. He was naked and appeared to be unconscious. He was very pale. The only visible wounds were two punctures at the neck, crusted with congealing blood, and another set high on his right thigh, just above the femoral artery.
“Draculiya,” said a pleasant voice. A man stepped out of the shadows beside the terrible crucifixion. “Always the knight, always ready to help a damsel in distress.” The man who spoke was young, no older than twenty-one or so, and dressed in a worn and bloodstained Union army uniform. There were sergeant’s stripes on both arms, and a cavalry sabre hung from his wide leather belt. He reached and stroked the white flesh of Matthew Van Helsing’s torn thigh. “I was never much of a one for damsels myself.”
“Matthew!” Echo moaned. She rushed forward, but the Vampyr’s upraised arm kept her in check.
“There’s nothing you can do for him now,” he said. “Adamo has used him to feed on.”
“And very tasty he was, dear Count. Very tasty indeed. A virgin, in more ways than one.” The creature looked at Echo and winked broadly. “But no longer, in more ways than one.” He laughed at his joke and Echo struggled against the Vampyr’s grip.
“It’s time we ended this,” the Vampyr said, lifting the sword.
“You know that’s not going to happen,” said the other creature. His jaws worked and his own wolfish fangs appeared, glistening and wet. “We can live and die a thousand times and it will not end. That is our horror and our joy, Draculiya, to go on forever, to see it through to whatever choking ending is the fate of the world.”
With a scream of rage Echo fought her way free of the Vampyr’s restraint and lunged forward, the black obsidian blade plunging toward the other creature’s heart.
Stumbling through the filthy wreckage of the basement, she came at the smiling, slack-jawed creature who awaited her so patiently, one hand resting carelessly on the terrible device that held her brother, the other hand resting just as carelessly on the butt of the pistol stuck through his broad leather belt. Calmly he drew the weapon, lifted it and pulled back the hammer, aiming the long barrel between her heaving breasts.
“Such a pity,” he said quietly. “Such a waste.” Beside him, Matthew moaned terribly. The creature’s finger tightened on the trigger.
“No,” said a voice out of the darkness. “You shall not have her.”
The Vampyr’s blade came sweeping down out of the deep shadows in the horrible low-ceilinged chamber, not at the creature’s neck, but at his wrist, slicing through flesh and bone as though they were nothing. The fingers of the severed hand twisted in spasm, and the pistol fired up into the rafters. The hand fell into the mud at Echo’s feet, briefly spurting black blood before it shriveled into a corrupted liquefying jelly that drained into the earth. Screeching in pain, his good hand gripping the horror of his amputated wrist, the creature twisted away and vanished backward into the deeper shadows at the back of the rotting basement chamber. From above Echo’s head there was a terrible crash and the sound of flames. The Vampyr stepped forward.
“Hurry,” he said to Echo. “We must hurry now. Your brother.”
Echo nodded and they turned their attention to the ravaged, emaciated form spread-eagled on the horrible device. They cut him down and, moaning terribly, he fell into the Vampyr’s arms. Enoch Bale carried him like a child, Matthew’s face pressed into his shoulder. Ahead of them the roof above their heads was beginning to smolder and smoke, wisps of choking fumes twisting down like fog from the burning building above them, creaking ominously now, with seconds left before it collapsed.
“Follow me,” said the Vampyr calmly. He strode ahead toward the small, below-street-level door that led into the well beside the steps. He smashed his booted foot through the rotted, dry-as-tinder wood, Echo close behind him, and they were outside at last. Coughing with the sudden clouds of smoke that began to billow around her, Echo stumbled up the stone carved steps and reached the cobbled street.
“Miss Van Helsing!” a voice cried. Echo peered through the smoke. There was a carriage a few feet away, a single horse plunging and stamping on the cobbles as the fiery building behind Echo began to collapse in on itself. Flames rose, spurting from the windows. Greasy black smoke billowed everywhere. Echo peered through the cinder-laden smoke and saw Kate Warne trying to soothe the terrified beast as the Vampyr laid poor Matthew across the carriage’s padded seat. A waft of smoke blinded her, and when she looked again the Vampyr had vanished. Sobbing, she threw herself toward the waiting carriage and safety at last.