Fevre Dream Read online

  “Yes,” said Joshua, and that broke the spell, and everyone took seats again. But Julian took Joshua’s seat, the seat at the head of the table.

  Joshua came and stood over Julian. “You are in my seat,” he said. His voice seemed flat and tense. “This one is yours, sir. If you will be so kind.” York gestured. His eyes were fixed on Damon Julian, and Marsh glanced up at Joshua’s face and saw the power there, the cold intensity, the determination.

  Damon Julian smiled. “Ah,” he said softly. He shrugged slightly. “Pardon.” Then, never looking up at Joshua York for even an instant, he rose and moved to the other seat.

  Joshua seated himself stiffly, and made an impatient motion with his fingers. A waiter came hurrying from the shadows and deposited a bottle on the table in front of York. “Kindly leave the room,” Joshua told the youth.

  The bottle was unlabeled. Beneath the chandeliers, surrounded by gleaming crystal and silver, it seemed dark and threatening. It had been opened. “You know what this is,” Joshua York said flatly to Damon Julian.

  “Yes.”

  York reached out, took up Julian’s wine glass, and poured. He filled the glass to the brim, and put it down again squarely in front of the other. “Drink,” he ordered.

  York’s eyes were on Julian. Julian stared at the glass, a faint smile playing around the corners of his mouth, as if he were involved in some secret amusement. The grand saloon was utterly silent. Far off in the distance, Marsh heard the faint wail of a steamer struggling through the rain. The moment seemed to last forever.

  Damon Julian reached out, took up the glass, and drank. In a single long draught, he emptied the glass, and it was as if he drank all the tension from the room. Joshua smiled, Abner Marsh grunted, and down at the far end of the table, others traded wary, puzzled glances. York poured three more glasses, and had them passed down to Julian’s three companions. All of them drank. Conversations began in low whispers.

  Damon Julian smiled at Abner Marsh. “Your steamer is most impressive, Captain Marsh,” he said cordially. “I hope the food is as excellent.”

  “The food,” said Marsh, “is better.” He bellowed, feeling almost like his own self again, and the waiters began bringing out the feast that Toby had cooked up. For more than an hour, they ate. The night folks had fine manners, but their appetites were healthy as any riverman’s. They went at the food like a bunch of roustabouts who’d just heard the mate shout, “Grub-pile!” All except Damon Julian, that was. Julian ate slowly, almost delicately, pausing often to sip at his wine, smiling frequently for no apparent reason. Marsh had cleaned off his third platter, and Julian’s plate was still half-full. Conversation was relaxed and inconsequential. Those far away talked low and heatedly, so Marsh couldn’t make out what they were saying. Up close, Joshua York and Damon Julian mouthed a lot of words about the storm, the heat, the river, and the Fevre Dream. Except for when they were talking about his steamer, Abner Marsh took little interest, preferring to concentrate on his plate.

  Finally coffee and brandy were served, and then the waiters faded away, and the main cabin of the steamer was empty but for Abner Marsh and the night folks. Marsh sipped at his brandy and heard the noise he made sucking it up before he quite realized that all conversations had ceased. “We are together at last,” Joshua said, in a quiet voice, “and this is a new beginning for us, for the people of the night. Those who live by day might call it a new dawning.” He smiled. “For us, a new sunset might be a more appropriate metaphor. Listen, all of you. Let me tell you of my plans.” Then Joshua rose, and began to speak in earnest.

  How long he spoke Abner Marsh was not sure. Marsh had heard it all before; freedom from the red thirst, an end of fear, trust between day and night, the things that would be achieved by partnership, the grand new epoch. On and on Joshua went, eloquent, impassioned, his speech full of little snatches of poems and five-dollar words. Marsh paid more attention to the others, to the rows of pale faces all up and down the table. All of them had their eyes on Joshua, all of them were listening, silent. But they weren’t all the same. Simon seemed a little jumpy, and kept glancing from York to Julian and back again. Jean Ardant looked rapt and worshipful, but some of the other faces were blank and cold and hard to read. Raymond Ortega was smiling slyly, and the big one called Kurt was frowning, and Valerie looked nervous, and Katherine—she had on her thin, hard face such a look of utter loathing that Marsh flinched to see it.

  Then Marsh looked directly across the table to where Damon Julian was seated, and found Julian staring back at him. His eyes were black, hard and shiny as a lump of the best coal. Marsh saw pits there, endless bottomless pits, a chasm waiting to swallow them all up. He wrenched his eyes away, unwilling to even try to stare down Julian, as he had foolishly tried to stare down York so long ago at the Planters’ House. Julian smiled, glanced up again at Joshua, sipped at his cold coffee, and listened. Abner Marsh did not like that smile, nor the depth of those eyes. All at once he was afraid again.

  And finally Joshua finished, and sat down.

  “The steamboat is a fine idea,” Julian said pleasantly. His soft voice carried the length of the saloon. “Your drink may even have its uses. From time to time. The rest, dear Joshua, you must forget.” His tone was charming, his smile relaxed and brilliant.

  Someone drew in his breath sharply, but no one dared to speak. Abner Marsh sat up very straight. Joshua frowned. “Excuse me,” he said.

  Julian made a languid gesture of dismissal. “Your story makes me sad, dear Joshua,” he said. “Raised among the cattle, now you think as they do. It is not your fault, of course. In time you will learn, you will celebrate your true nature. They have corrupted you, these little animals you have lived among, they have filled you with their small moralities, their feeble religions, their tedious dreams.”

  “What are you saying?” Joshua’s voice was angry.

  Julian did not answer him directly. Instead he turned to Marsh. “Captain Marsh,” he asked, “that roast you so enjoyed was once part of a living animal. Do you suppose that, if that beast could talk, he would consent to being eaten?” His eyes, those fierce black eyes, were locked on Marsh, demanding an answer.

  “I . . . hell, no . . . but . . .”

  “But you eat him anyway, do you not?” Julian laughed lightly. “Of course you do, Captain, don’t be ashamed of it.”

  “I ain’t ashamed,” Marsh said stoutly. “It’s only a cow.”

  “Of course it is,” said Julian, “and cattle are cattle.” He looked back at Joshua York. “But the cattle may see it differently. However, that ought not trouble the captain here. He is a higher order of being than his cow. It is his nature to kill and eat, and the cow’s to be killed and eaten. You see, Joshua, life is really very simple.

  “Your errors rise from being raised among cows, who have taught you not to consume them. Evil, you talk about. Where did you learn that concept? From them, of course, from the cattle. Good and evil, those are cattle words, empty, intended only to preserve their worthless lives. They live and die in mortal dread of us, their natural superiors. We haunt even their dreams, so they seek solace in lies, and invent gods who have power over us, wanting to believe that somehow crosses and holy water can master us.

  “You must understand, dear Joshua, that there is no good or evil, only strength and weakness, masters and slaves. You are feverish with their morality, with guilt and shame. How foolish that is. These are their words, not ours. You preach of new beginnings, but what shall we begin? To be as cattle? To burn beneath their sun, work when we might take, bow to cattle gods? No. They are animals, our natural inferiors, our great and beautiful prey. That is the way of things.”

  “No,” said Joshua York. He pushed back his chair and rose, so he stood over the table like a pale, slender goliath. “They think, they dream, and they have built a world, Julian. You are wrong. We are cousins, both sides of the same coin. They are not prey. Look at all they have done! They bring beauty into the world.
What have we created? Nothing. The red thirst has been our bane.”

  Damon Julian sighed. “Ah, poor Joshua,” he said. He sipped his brandy. “Let the cattle create—life, beauty, what you will. And we shall take their creations, use them, destroy them if we choose. That is the way of it. We are the masters. Masters do not labor. Let them make the suits. We shall wear them. Let them build the steamboats. We shall ride upon them. Let them dream of life eternal. We shall live it, and drink of their lives, and savor the blood. We are the lords of this earth, and that is our heritage. Our destiny, if you will, dear Joshua. Exult in your nature, Joshua, do not seek to change it. Those cattle who truly know us envy us. Any of them would be as we are, given the choice.” Julian smiled maliciously. “Have you ever wondered why this Jesus Christ of theirs bid his followers to drink his blood, if they would live forever?” He chuckled. “They burn to be like us, just as the darkies dream of being white. You see how far they go. To play at being masters, they even enslave their own kind.”

  “As you do, Julian,” said Joshua York, dangerously. “What else do you call the dominion you have held over our people? Even those you call masters you make slaves to your own twisted will.”

  “Even we have strong and weak among us, dear Joshua,” said Damon Julian. “It is fitting that the strong should lead.” Julian set down his glass and looked far down the table. “Kurt,” he said, “summon Billy.”

  “Yes, Damon,” said the big man, rising.

  “Where are you going?” Joshua demanded, as Kurt strode from the room, his image moving purposefully across a dozen mirrors.

  “You have played at being cattle long enough, Joshua,” said Julian. “I am going to teach you what it means to be a master.”

  Abner Marsh felt cold and frightened. All the eyes in the room were glassy, transfixed, watching the drama at the head of the table. Standing, Joshua York seemed to tower over the seated Damon Julian, but somehow he did not dominate. Joshua’s gray eyes looked as strong and passionate as a man’s could be. But Julian wasn’t a man at all, Marsh thought.

  Kurt was back in less than a moment. Sour Billy must have been just outside somewhere, like a slave waiting for his master’s summons. Kurt took his place again. Sour Billy Tipton sauntered right up to the head of the table, carrying something, with a strange sort of excitement in his icy eyes.

  Damon Julian swept the plates aside with an arm, clearing a space on the table. Sour Billy shifted his burden and set a small brown infant down on the tablecloth in front of Joshua York.

  “What the hell!” Marsh roared. He pushed back from the table, glaring, and started to rise.

  “Sit down and keep real quiet, boy,” Sour Billy said in a flat, quiet voice. Marsh started to turn toward him, and felt something cold and very sharp press gently against the side of his neck. “You open your mouth and I’m goin’ to have to bleed you,” Sour Billy said. “Can you just imagine what they’ll do when they see all that nice hot blood?”

  Trembling, caught between rage and terror, Abner Marsh sat very still. The point of Billy’s knife pressed a little harder, and Marsh felt something warm and wet trickle down into his collar. “Good,” whispered Billy, “real nice.”

  Joshua York glanced briefly at Marsh and Sour Billy, then turned his attention back to Julian. “I find this obscene,” he said coldly. “Julian, I do not know why you had this child brought here, but I do not like it. This game will end right now. Tell your man to take his knife away from the captain’s throat.”

  “Ah,” said Julian. “And if I do not choose to?”

  “You will choose to,” said Joshua. “I am bloodmaster.”

  “Are you?” asked Julian lightly.

  “Yes. I do not like to use your methods of compulsion, Julian, but if I must, I shall.”

  “Ah,” said Julian. He smiled. He stood up, stretched lazily, like some great dark cat waking from a nap, then extended a hand across the table toward Sour Billy. “Billy, give your knife to me,” he said.

  “But—what about him?” Sour Billy said.

  “Captain Marsh will behave himself now,” said Julian. “The knife.”

  Billy handed it over, hilt first.

  “Good,” said Joshua.

  He got no further. The baby—undersized, scrawny, very brown and very naked—made a sort of gurgling noise just then, and stirred feebly. And Damon Julian did the most horrible thing that Abner Marsh had ever seen in all his born days. Swiftly and very delicately, he leaned over the table and brought down Sour Billy’s knife and cut the infant’s small right hand clean off with a single smooth stroke.

  The baby began to howl. Blood spurted onto the table, over the crystal glasses and the silverware and the fine white linen. The baby’s limbs thrashed feebly, and the blood began to pool. And Julian impaled the severed hand—it was so impossibly tiny, hardly the size of Marsh’s big toe—on the blade of Billy’s knife. He held it up, dripping, in front of Joshua York. “Drink,” he said, and all the lightness was gone from his voice.

  York slapped the knife aside. It spun from Julian’s hand, the hand still impaled upon it, and landed six feet away on the carpet. Joshua looked like death. He reached down, put two strong fingers on either side of the infant’s thrashing wrist, and pressed. The bleeding stopped. “Get me a cord,” he commanded.

  No one moved. The infant was still screaming.

  “There is an easier way to quiet him,” Julian said. He took his own hard pale hand and clamped it down across the child’s mouth. The hand enveloped the small brown head completely, and stifled all sound. Julian began to squeeze.

  “Release him!” shouted York.

  “Look at me,” said Julian. “Look at me, bloodmaster.”

  And their eyes met as they stood there above the table, each with a hand on the small brown piece of humanity before them.

  Abner Marsh just sat there, thunderstruck, sick and furious and wanting to do something, but somehow unable to move. Like all the rest of them, he stared at York and Julian, at the strange, silent battle of wills.

  Joshua York was trembling. His mouth was tight with anger, and cords stood up in his neck, and his gray eyes were as cold and forceful as an ice jam. He stood there like a man possessed, a pale wrathful god in white and blue and silver. It was impossible for anything to withstand that outpouring of will, of strength, Marsh thought. Impossible.

  And then he looked at Damon Julian.

  The eyes dominated the face: cold, black, malevolent, implacable. Abner Marsh looked into those eyes a moment too long, and suddenly he felt dizzy. He heard men screaming somewhere, distantly, and his mouth was warm with the taste of blood. He saw all the masks that were called Damon Julian and Giles Lamont and Gilbert d’Aquin and Philip Caine and Sergei Alexov and a thousand other men fall away, and behind each one was another, older and more horrible, layer on layer of them each more bestial than the last, and at the bottom the thing had no charm, no smile, no fine words, no rich clothing or jewels, the thing had nothing of humanity, was nothing of humanity, had only the thirst, the fever, red, red, ancient and insatiable. It was primal and inhuman and it was strong. It lived and breathed and drank the stuff of fear, and it was old, oh so old, older than man and all his works, older than the forests and rivers, older than dreams.

  Abner Marsh blinked, and there across the table from him was an animal, a tall handsome animal in burgundy, and there was nothing the least bit human about it, and the lines of its face were the lines of terror, and its eyes—its eyes were red, not black at all, red, and lit from within, and red, burning, thirsting, red.

  Joshua York released the infant’s stump. A sudden pent-up wash of blood spurted feebly out across the table. An instant later a sound like a terrible wet crunch filled the saloon.

  And Abner Marsh, still half-dazed, slid the long kitchen knife out of his boot and came out of his seat screaming, raving, slashing. Sour Billy tried to grab him from behind, but Marsh was too strong, too wild. He brushed Billy aside, and flun
g himself across the dinner table at Damon Julian. Julian broke away from Joshua York’s eyes just in time, and pulled back slightly. The knife missed his eye by a fraction of an inch, and left a long open gash down the right side of his face. Blood welled out of the wound, and Julian made a snarling sound deep in his throat.

  Then someone seized Marsh from behind and dragged him off the table and flung him backward across the grand saloon, lifted him and flung him, all three hundred pounds of him, like he was a small child. It hurt something fierce when he landed, but somehow Marsh managed to roll over and get back to his feet.

  It was Joshua had thrown him, he saw, and Joshua who was standing closest to him now, Joshua with pale hands trembling and gray eyes full of fear. “Run, Abner,” he said. “Get off the steamer. Run.”Behind him the others had all risen from the table. White faces, eyes intent and staring, hands pale and hard and grasping. Katherine was smiling, smiling at him the way she’d smiled when she’d caught him coming from Joshua’s cabin. Old Simon was shaking. Even Smith and Brown were drifting toward him, slowly, ringing him in, and their eyes were not friendly, and their lips were wet. They were all moving, all of them, and Damon Julian came gliding around the table, almost soundless, the blood drying on his cheek, the gash closing almost as Marsh watched. Abner Marsh looked down at his hands, and discovered that he had lost the knife. He backed up, step by step, until his back was up against a mirrored stateroom door.

  “Run, Abner,” Joshua York repeated.

  Marsh fumbled and opened the door and backed into the cabin behind him, and he saw Joshua turn his back and stand between the cabin and the others, Julian and Katherine and all the rest, the night folks, the vampires. And that was the last thing he saw, before he broke and ran.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Aboard the Steamer Fevre Dream,

  Mississippi River,

  August 1857

  When the sun rose over New Orleans the next morning, a swollen yellow eye that turned the river mists to crimson and promised a scorching day, Abner Marsh was waiting on the levee.