The Damnation Affair

Chapter 32

Perched on the wagon’s swaying front seat, Cat peered through the rain. Each time it jolted, her side ached; her bottom was never going to forgive her. She clung to his thin, stone-hard arm, and blinked away falling water. Her hair was an absolute sodden mess. Neither of them were respectable at this point, and the heaviness of the trunks in the back of the wagon probably kept the entire contraption from flying away in this dreadful storm. “Does it…hurt?”

“No more than living.” Robbie’s laugh was a marvel of bitterness. “Neither of us will be carrying on the Barrowe-Browne name, I fancy.”

Of course not. The undead do not procreate, even the conscious ones. “Don’t be nasty, Robbie.” She sighed, exhaustion swamping her. “But please do answer me honestly: Does it hurt?”

“What’s pain? For God’s sake, would you rather be one of its corpses?”

She jabbed her fingers in just under his ribs, and pinched him. The skin gave a fraction, resilient stone. He actually laughed, and it was Robbie’s old carefree, surprised merriment. “Ow! Very well. It stings, Kittycat. I won’t lie, it stings a bit. But that’s only until you fall asleep. I’ll do it as gently as possible.”

“And you’re…you’re certain I’ll wake up?” She suddenly felt very small, and as the rain intensified and the wagon’s wheels cut into a sludge of mud, she huddled closer to her brother and wished Jack Gabriel were here too.

But he won’t take very kindly to what Robbie is, and what I’m going to be. She shuddered a trifle, but her brother was right. The…the it, the master, or him, as Robbie inevitably referred to it as, had contaminated her brother. A man of Jack Gabriel’s stripe would not allow such a contaminated thing to live. He was a sheriff, for God’s sake. And so irritatingly…well, he was so irritatingly Jack. It was the only word she could find.

“I’m absolutely certain.” Her brother’s tone was so grim she dared not question further.

Now that Cat’s throat was throbbing with pain, she was contaminated, too. The thing had not outright killed her, perhaps because it still needed Robbie’s aid. But it had put her in that ghastly underground cave…and the bodies, dear God, the corpses piled up, waiting to serve the master’s bidding at some future moment—perhaps when it was certain it could overwhelm the town and add to their number in one great mass.

Some of them were merely bones, and older ones, slowly mouldering in the labyrinth’s depths, were dressed in strange and primitive costumes. The removal of the clothes was a newer tradition, it seemed, and Cat’s shudders were coming regularly now, in great gripping waves.

“I don’t feel quite right,” she murmured.

“Try to rest. You lost a lot of blood.”

“How gruesome.”

He shook a spatter of rain away, the familiar forelock falling over his pale forehead. “Well, that’s what it is. Cattle are good, other animals—but you won’t have to bite anything. You can just take from me; I’ll hunt for the both of us.”

This was a highly indelicate conversation, and her stomach was none too steady. “Robbie…”

“You shouldn’t have come.”

Well, you shouldn’t have left in the first place. “I had to.”

“I know. I just wish…” Mercifully, he stopped. “Should be around here. Why this patch is consecrated, I can’t tell you. You’ll feel it as soon as we get there. It’s actually pleasant. And then, after dusk tomorrow, we’ll set out. We’ll go to San Frances. If we’re careful, we may actually pass unnoticed.”

“We won’t for long. Or do you think our presence will not spread the contamination, and cause a great deal of suffering?”

“Well, I haven’t turned anyone into a slavering undead yet. I believe the consecrated burial is what saved me from…” Robbie trailed off, lifting his head. The rain was coming down harder now, and Cat discovered she was quite sick of frontier living, no matter how Miss Bowdler rhapsodized about its purity.

I will never see my students again. Or the ladies from the Lucky Star. She found, much to her surprise, that she quite missed them already. And Li Ang’s round, now-familiar face, and little baby Jonathan’s piping cries. She even missed the heat and the dust. Any heat would have been welcome now.

Is Jack well? He stayed behind at the cave, to do…what? He said he had business there. Oddly enough, the thought of him—dirty, stubbled, and comforting—hurt somewhere in the region of her chest. A piercing pain, as if she had been stabbed.

Her head ached quite dreadfully, too. “I truly do not feel well.” Her voice was high and rather young, as if she were nine and afraid of the shadows on the nursery wall again.

“Don’t worry.” Her brother tautened the reins, and the horses—thin nags, but tough as bootleather—halted, switching their tails. “We have arrived. Straighten your fan, dearest.”

The words—just what he would say before a ball, in the carriage as they braced themselves for another night In Society—made a small, forlorn giggle escape her. How far they were from Boston. Here, in the middle of a wet night in the cold, and her throat throbbing terribly…but still, she clung to his arm until he fastened the reins and hopped down from the wagon.

It was dark, and the rain came down in sheets. She could just make out a roaring river, its curve reminding her terribly of the crescent of sandy beach and the soul-eating blackness on its other shore. But there were white-trunked jessum trees, shaking their jangling bracelet-leaves under the wind, and as Robbie lifted her down she felt a tingle along her skin. It was a comforting warmth, and even though her breath came in puffs of white cloud as the wind veered and cut through her sodden riding habit, she felt it like a blanket about her shoulders.

“Oh,” she said, a thin breath of wonder, and her brother laughed again.

“I told you that you would feel it. Now, step this way, sister.”

She did, holding fast to his arm, and the rain was a curtain of jewels. The jessum trees waved their long fluttering finials in greeting, and there was a patch of sunken earth with a stone at its head.

Robbie drove the shovel in at the foot of the grave, his booted foot stamping it cleanly home. It would wait until needed.

She clung to his arm with all her remaining strength, and when he turned to face her, there was a break in the heavy clouds, and starshine played over his pale, ravaged face.

“Are you quite sure?” he asked her, pointlessly.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Her throat really did hurt most awfully, and her head was full of rushing noise. She stepped away, her hands falling to her sides, fisting inside the ruins of her gloves. “We shall go to San Frances. The opera there is quite fine, I’ve been told.” There was a gleam in his hands. The rain slackened. The gleam was a pistol, and the fear was suddenly very large, and she was lost in it. “Robbie…” Breathless, and she lifted her chin. I am a Barrowe-Browne. I shall not cry. “Do it, for God’s sake. Do not let me become a mindless slave to that thing. I would rather…well.” I would rather die, but I will, won’t I? Either way. It is six of one, a half-dozen of another. At least this way I shall not become a slavering hag.

“I…” His throat worked, and the warmth enveloping her skin was familiar. Where had she felt it before? “I am sorry, Kittycat.”

She nodded, strings of wet hair falling in her face. If she ever reached a dry warm place after this, she would stay there for a month, she promised herself. Thick woolen socks, and a wrapper, and some of Li Ang’s harsh black tea would do very well right at the moment.

The pistol’s mouth looked very large as he pointed it at her. Where had he acquired such a thing, she wondered, and decided not to ask if it had been bought in a pawnshop on Damnation’s dusty main street.

What else had Robbie bought from a chartershadow, she wondered?

“If this hurts,” she managed in a queerly husky, ruined voice, “I shall simply pinch you, Robert. Twice.”

He squeezed the trigger, and squeezed his eyes shut at the same time, and there was a terrific blow to her chest.

How odd, it doesn’t hurt. The warmth spilled through her, and there was a rivulet of something hot on her chin. She reached up to dab it away, but her limbs would not obey her. A swimming weakness took her, and Robbie cried her name, over and over.

It is all well, she wanted to tell him, but the bubble of warmth burst on her lips and she fell. She did not feel it, spilled sideways onto the cold ground…

…and Catherine Elizabeth Barrowe-Browne died.