Free Night of the Vampires by Heather Graham Page B

off every assault; they had actually been an awesome force.
    They remained still, tense and waiting. She could hear the thunder of his heart, and the heave of his breath as they waited.
    That, and nothing more.
    When she looked to the trees, there was nothing.
    â€œIt’s over,” she whispered softly.
    Around them lay a field of rotting dead. Blue uniforms, gray, butternut. They wore insignias that denoted them as militia, captains, privates, Army of the Potomac. The Southern boys were mostly in rags.
    â€œWait, keep an eye on the trees,” Cole warned.
    â€œNo. There is nothing more there.”
    â€œHow do you know that?”
    She turned to look at him at last. “Because we weren’talone, Cole. Someone was in among the creatures there, someone who helped us.”
    He shook his head. His words sounded harsh. “No, Megan. Why do you think that Brendan Vincent went to find your brother in the first place? A staunch Federalist seeking the help of a Rebel doctor? You and Cody are anomalies. A vampire is a predator. A disease. A mass of infection. A parasite that must thieve blood to survive.”
    â€œYou’re wrong. Some can be…nearly human,” she said.
    Cole paused, and she knew that she had struck a chord with him. She didn’t know what had really gone on in Victory, Texas, but she was pretty sure that Cole had seen infected people become decent vampires. He had to know it could happen.
    â€œThis thing could just have been some kind of a trick, or even a trick of your eyes,” he told her. “What exactly did you see?”
    She wanted to explain, but when she opened her mouth, all she could think of to describe what she had seen was, “A shadow.”
    â€œA shadow?”
    She nodded.
    â€œMegan, they come as shadows, they can move like the wind. You know that. You’ve done it, I’m sure.” She was surprised when he touched her arm, gently. “This is our battle,” he said. “It would be nice to think that others were helping, but it’s doubtful. And we’ve got to get moving here—we have a bit of a problem.”
    She looked around at the fallen. The corpses were far too new to have dissolved to ash.
    â€œGood point. How do we explain all these dead?”
    â€œAnd how long do we dare stay here without…withoutreinforcements?” he asked. “The sun is falling. We have to make sure that we’ve completely dispatched all these men, and then we have to get out of here. I’ll find Lisette and have her see that the burial detail that cleaned up at the prison gets here, too. We’ve got to get back to Cody and Brendan and find out what they discovered today. Hopefully we got a fair number of the loose vampires here.”
    She nodded. She didn’t know why, but she felt a sting of tears in her eyes. So many dead! It was war, and men were dying every day. But this… Her heart went out to the beings she had taken down. The Rebels that lay dead had endured battle and capture, but not this unnatural thing.
    They shouldn’t have ended this way.
    â€œDisease,” Cole said sadly, looking down at a soldier. “Ah, yes, Cody told me once that disease and infection killed far more men than bullets. I guess he’s right. The gangrene and the vampire diseases, both.”
    Wincing, Megan silently agreed, and together they hurriedly made sure that the “diseased” could not come back to strike again.
    The sun was almost completely down. They hurried from the cemetery, hitching a ride into the city on a medical supply wagon. They sat in the back, on a flatbed filled with crates, forced to nearly sit atop each other.
    But it wasn’t a bad position, Megan thought. She was tired, and the afternoon had left her worried and confused. Her fears of a greater threat came to the fore again, and she considered mentioning something to Cole, weighing her combat-born fears against rational