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“I shall tell you what you have.” Mrs. Bethany — in Regency costume, her hair piled high upon her head — leaned out of the door, completely unfazed by the attack. Was this the moment she was changed?
Then she hoisted a crossbow. “You have to run,” she said.
The vampires scattered, but not fast enough. Mrs. Bethany shot one straight through, the wooden shaft staking it in the heart. In a flash, the carriage driver and liverymen leaped into action, each of them armed, each of them sure and detem1ined as they ran into the forest after the vampires.
“Quickly!” Mrs. Bethany cried, jumping from tl1e carriage so that her skirts fluttered. Already she had reloaded the crossbow, and despite the darkness, she took aim and brought another vampire down in a single stroke. Her smile was brilliant in the night. ;;We have them now!”
She laughed out loud as she pulled a broadsword from within her cloak. As she lifted it high, I turned away: I’d seen one vampire being beheaded, and that was enough for a lifetime. As I heard the sick wet thud,l winced — and then my eyes opened wide.
“The way they’re fighting .. . the way she throws herself into it…” I’d seen this before.
“Trained well, don’t you think?” Christopher never looked away from Mrs. Bethany.
“If she was hunting vampires, and if she knew just what to do, then she was — she had to be — Mrs. Bethany was in Black Cross?”
I had to look at her again now. The fight was over, the vampires dust at her feet. In the moonlight, her smile softened and became warm as she rushed forward toward one of the liverymen — who, I now realized, was a slightly younger Christopher. They embraced each other, her arms tight around his neck, and kissed so passionately that I felt my cheeks flush.
“We were both raised among Black Cross hunters,” Christopher said as he watched his long — ago happiness with his wife. “When I emigrated to America in the first years of its independence, I connected with the first Boston cell. There we met. Few women hunted in those days, but nobody questioned her. She was the best fighter among us. And the vampires — they always underestimated her l!lntil it was too late. There sprang up a legend amorng them of a huntress both beautiful and deadly, which they disbelieved at their peril. Sometimes it was the last thing they said, even as the stake sank into them. ‘It is her.’”
The forest had darkened into indistinct gloom, but now shapes began to form anew. I saw a small house, simple, with one large room that seemed to be both kitchen and parlor. The fireplace was enormous, deep enough to walk into, tall as a person and as long as the house itself. A teakettle hung near the flames as Mrs. Bethany busied herself cutting cake; at the table, Christopher sat with a few men dressed as he was, with long coats and white kerchiefs tied at their throats. They had large metal cups filled with something that looked like beer, and they were laughing loudly.
Was it tbe clarity of this place that showed me the others weren’t as happy as they pretended to be? That their eyes watched Christopher cagily tss as he took another drink?
“Business associates.” Christopher’s face was illuminated by the long — ago fire. We seemed to be standing at the very edge of the room, in deep shadow. “Friends, or so I thought. We joined in a shipping venture. Trade between Europe and America, in fine goods — a growing industry in that time, and therefore a likely bet to increase my family’s wealth. But I was accustomed only to the company of Black Cross hunters; say what you will of Black Cross, but they do not engage in such gross trickery. I had been brought up to think that all evil was embodied by vampires. I did not look for it in men who called themselves my friends.”
“What did they do?” 1 whispered, though I knew by now the figures before us couldn’t hear.
“They did not want to establish a shipping business. They only wanted to steal the family money I gave them as investment.” He still sounded slightly bewildered — like after a couple hundred years, Christopher hadn’t yet wrapped his mind around the fact of his betrayal. “After some months, I began to press them for returns. Profits. To examine the books. They had countless excuses and nothing to show me. One night I swore I would take them to court. As I walked home that night, they attacked me. I was unarmed, and recovering from a winter illness. My Black Cross training was to no avail. They left me dying in a ditch. The last sound I heard was their laughter as they walked away.”
“I’m sorry.” Before us remained the happy scene with everyone being friendly. Maybe he preferred this to remembering his death; I wouldn ‘ t blame him. I didn’t like remembering my death either, and at least I’d been in my bed, with Lucas by my side. “That’s awful.”
Christopher stared hard at his killers, who were at that moment laughing at one of his jokes. Mrs. Bethany set the slices of cake in front of them; she didn’t seem to be in as good spirits as the others. In fact, her expression was wary. She’d picked up on trouble even if her husband hadn’t.
Then the room shifted again, with Mrs. Bethany remaining motionless at the center of it, her dress flowing from one color to another and her expression changing from unease to rage. “What do you mean, you cannot act?”
The scene in front of us was now some kind of meetinghouse or storeroom. Black Cross, I realized, seeing the weaponry mounted on the walls. 166 A man with his hair tied in a tail sat on a slightly raised platform, obviously in charge. He shook his head.. “Mrs. Bethany, as lamentable as your husband’s death is, it was not the work of any supernatural agency. Therefore it does not concern Black Cross.”
“The magistrate will not listen,” Mrs. Bethany said. “He believes it was the work of bandits and says lam a foolish woman, doubting two such ‘fine gentlemen.’ “She spat those two words, as if she thought they could poison her. “I could kill them myself, but they are gone to the Caribbean. His family’s money is lost, because of their deceit. At least give me the funds to travel there, to see justice done.”
The Black Cross leader looked at Mrs. Bethany pityingly — the same look, I realized, that Kate had worn when she refused to give back Lucas’s coffee can full of cash. “Our funds are used for our struggle, and every penny is needed. You know this as well as I. Your grief has brought you to the point of hysteria.”
Mrs. Bethany’s proud face never changed, but I saw something I’d never expected to see: her eyes filling with tears. Yet she spoke steadily. “After everything I have done, everything I have given, this is your answer.”
“What other answer could there be?”
She stepped back slightly, cocking her head in that familiar gesture of contemplation and contempt. Li.ke she’s seeing him for the first time, I thought.
Christopher said, “In that instant, her dedication to Black Cross turned to hate. We can always hate that which we loved, and with a fire as great as our love once was.”
The room vanished, replaced by the same forest pathway we had seen first. But the scene had changed to winter; the na**d tree branches glittered with ice, and the ground was thick with snow. Mrs. Bethany rode alone on horseback, sidesaddle, with a heavy cape of dark furs around her. Her eyes searched her surroundings despite the deepening shadows — it was dusk, the sky a piercing cobalt blue. Then she sat up a little straighter; she’d spotted something.
A vampire stepped from behind one of the larger trees, obviously uneasy. “Whatever trap you set, huntress, it’s a dangerous one for you. Your 167 help is too far away.”
“I set no trap,” Mrs. Bethany said. She dismounted from her horse and walked slowly toward him in the snow. “I bear no weapons.”
“Then I suppose you have come to die, huntress.”
It was a taunt, but Mrs. Bethany lifted her head. “Yes.”
