Forever Young Birth Of A Nation (70 page)

“Describe it.”

“If I do will you quit using that knife on
me?”

“If you tell me the truth, yes.”

Grundy described the place as best he could
recall and fell silent then.

“Describe the landmarks along the way and
which side of the road it is on.”

Grundy thought a bit and then gave a
landmark beginning at Queen’s road and the number of homes he could
recall seeing along the way to its location.

“How did you think to catch me?”

“We thought you would return to uhmm…either
that bank, you know… the building you bought…or maybe you might go
to the Millhouse or Davis homes. We didn’t know where else to
watch.”

Ian sighed deeply and pulled his knife out,
rising and walking toward Grundy.

“You are not going to… to cut me again?”

“No. Did you not hear me promise that?”

“What are you doing… I mean what is
next?

“You and I are going to get some sunshine”
he said as he began to cut and rip Grundy’s boots and clothing from
his body.

“What? No! We’ll burn up, McCloud!”

“I can take around four hours of it at a
time. How about you?”

“What! Four hours? I can’t take four
minutes!”

“Well, right there are four buckets full of
water. I can pour it over you if you catch fire.”

“What? Well what… what happens when the
water is gone?”

Ian shrugged, replying “There’s a creek
here. We’ll see, won’t we?”

“Grundy should have returned by now.
Something is amiss for sure. Look at that overturned hassock in the
living room.”

“There is blood on the floor” said
Priscilla, pointing to a spot some fifteen feet past the hassock.
Yvonne knelt to smell it, and she stood, turning to Stefan, saying
“It’s Grundy’s blood. Roland could never draw blood from Grundy! It
had to be McCloud!”

Priscilla asked “But how can that be. He
could not know we live here. Did he follow you from
Pennsylvania?”

Yvonne paced the floor in silence, her green
eyes blazing as she thought
did Roland get lucky and kill
Grundy? Should we wait to see if he returns?
Damn you to
hell McCloud! You have done this some way, but how? We have to
leave here now and go back to the house I leased on Long Island.
Damn it anyway! I like it here.

“McCloud may have caught Roland and made him
tell where we are living. I… I don’t know how he did it, but
McCloud is behind this! Damn him to hell! Everyone pack up. We are
going back to Long Island.”

Bartholomew said “But Yvonne, we like it
here. We have more room here and over there it will be even more
crowded.”

“We have a barn over there too, and we will
be secure. He cannot find us, but we can still find him. Once he is
dead we can come back here, can’t we June?”

She nodded as her eyes began to glow, saying
“I don’t care what happens as long as we kill McCloud.”

“See. Once we get McCloud, some of you could
even stay there if you like.”

Priscilla stood up and walked up to Yvonne
and stood alongside of her saying “Yvonne is right. We will at
least be safe there. We can always come back later.”

“Thank you, Priscilla. Go and pack up all of
the pistols in Lester’s collection and give them to Bartholomew to
carry. Be sure to get all of the shot and powder too. We may need
pistols before it is over.”

***

King Charles III of Spain opened the
dispatch from the French Admiral Comte de Grasse. In it was
information to the effect that de Grasse was formally thanking him
for protecting the French merchant’s fleet in Cuba and that thanks
to Spain, he was now free to set sail for Chesapeake Bay to engage
the British fleet there with twenty nine fully-armed French ships
of the line.

Turning to his daughter Esmeralda he said “I
think our friend Ian McCloud would like this news, Esme.” He then
explained it to her, concluding with a good-natured remark about
her being so curious regarding international affairs. “Oh, Papa, I
know that you have all kinds of minsters, but with Mama gone, who
have you to really confide in? Only I will not judge you to be weak
when things are uncertain.”

Embracing her then, the king said “How right
you are, Esme. This could be a major turning point in the war over
there. The British will never suspect that a large French fleet is
approaching from the Caribbean.”

***

King Louis XVI opened the sealed dispatch in
the presence of his minister of war and minister of interior.
“Well, it appears that the Spanish have offered to protect our
merchant fleet in the Caribbean. Admiral Comte de Grasse has set
sail for Chesapeake Bay. That will be sure to surprise the British.
With Washington’s forces and our own General Comte de Rochambeau
north of New York City, the British are limited as to how many they
can send to help their army in Virginia. What do you gentlemen
think we might do to help this matter along?

“Your majesty, we both think that Rochambeau
should be told to join Washington and go south to Virginia, unless
he sees something that would preclude that.”

“I must say that all of you ministers have
been solidly behind me in this thing. I am glad not to have any
bickering among us over helping the Americans.”

“Your majesty, anything that is a blow
against Great Britain is a blow struck in favor of France.” In
fact, the two were both remembering that they, along with their
counterparts in the French government had been the ones that had
joined with the King of Spain and advised King Louis to support
America some years earlier when the American Benjamin Franklin had
been there seeking that support.

Now that the British were up to their ears
in foreign wars, Louis was so pleased that he commonly said things
to the effect that he was in favor of it all along, when in fact he
had to be persuaded to involve France due to financial concerns.
Each of the two ministers wondered if the other also had a bank
account in the Swiss Confederation or perhaps in Liechtenstein. In
fact both of them wondered if the ministers of the other divisions
of French government did not all have fat foreign bank accounts,
courtesy of the Laforge family. They would never know how correct
their suspicions were regarding that, nor would they ever have
guessed that the Lafayettes and Laforges were one and the same
people.

***

James, Melissa, the Millhouses, Cosette and
Stuart all walked out the side door at mid-morning, going directly
to the carriage house. In a quarter hour the doors swung open and
the butler was seen climbing up into the driver’s seat of a large
carriage. He clucked to the horses and the carriage came down the
driveway, all window curtains drawn shut and turning south toward
the downtown area of Manhattan, maintaining a sedate pace. Four
figures emerged from various places of concealment and ran to the
road, where three of them began to trot southward along the road.
The fourth came back up the driveway and turned to go into the
house. He had nearly reached the kitchen door when James rocketed
from the carriage house with a short sword and decapitated him on
the walk, just a few feet from the stoop.

Thanks to the arched trellis and the cover
of the Wisteria growing there, the deed was not done in an open
place. The nearest neighbors were some four hundred feet away from
the Millstone house to either side with only empty pastureland
lying across the road from the place and behind it. The numerous
evergreens on the property flanking both sides of their home gave
it complete privacy and that was the only thing which made
something like this plausible.

James took the feet of the headless corpse
and dragged it to the center of a small garden area, while Cosette
went to get the Millhouses. Laura, Thelma, and Merriam followed her
out of the coach house to the garden, the three of them gasping as
they saw the headless corpse already aflame. James came then with a
bucket and tossed the head down some ten feet away from the flaming
corpse and it burst into flame as the three astounded women gasped
yet again as they watched.

Cosette came to the three and said “I’m
sorry that you have to see this, but seeing it will remove any
doubt about what James and I told all of you last night. For your
own safety please do what we say until this thing is past us. These
vampires mean to kill me and my husband and they will kill anyone
else who they think knows about them. I am so sorry that this
trouble came into your lives. Will you accept my apology?”

The three turned to her, shock still showing
on their features as Thelma spoke “All of this time you lived with
us and you are… are one these…”

“I am a vampire as I told you last night. I
didn’t ask to be one nor did my husband. I don’t regret doing what
I did to find Ian. What was I to tell you when we met? How would
you have reacted to me, a stranger telling you about all of
this?”

Laura stepped forward and took Cosette’s
hands in hers “I understand. I would do what you did if I was in
your place.”

Cosette embraced her and smiled sweetly as
she said “The three of you have been so much more than kind to
Stuart and me. We hope that you will not separate from us over
this. We had hoped to remain close friends since we are going to be
living in New York City. I will understand it if you can’t do that
though.”

“So you would have reunited with your
husband and never have told us what… I mean who you are?”

Cosette nodded somberly, saying “Our kind
live and work with humans in Europe undetected. In my family three
of us have been married to humans.”

“My word! That is… extraordinary to say the
least” said Merriam.

“Please come along with us now. I’ll be
happy to answer questions on our way to Rebecca’s house.”

The four of them turned and walked to the
carriage house as James pumped a bucket full of water from the well
and rinsed away the blood near the kitchen stoop. In minutes they
were in a small two-horse carriage with James and Melissa atop the
driver’s seat, heading north.

***

It was a moonless night with a steady
northerly wind that caused the skeletal frames of the stately
hardwood trees to sway. The nearby evergreens sighed heavily in the
cold airflow as two black-clad figures approached the Millstone
home. They had arrived there shortly after sundown but after
sitting in their carriage cautiously for a while, they had seen
that there were two others concealed outside. Figuring that there
were more of them that they didn’t see, they elected to go to the
Davis home but the situation was the same there.

Returning on foot to investigate the
situation at the Millhouse home later they were now approaching the
place from the rear. They separated then, one staying flat on the
ground in the hedge area bordering the property while the other
moved silently toward where they had seen one of the two figures
hiding. As the lone black-clad figure came abreast of that place,
another figure erupted from a clump of bushes and shouted “Here! He
is here” as it hurtled toward the lone figure with a drawn sword.
That one turned and ran toward the road as three more joined the
one pursuing it.

Shortly after the four figures departed in
pursuit of the one, the other figure that was concealed in the
border hedge emerged and quickly tried both doors. Finding them
locked, it bounded up to the 3
^rd
story roof and began to
try dormer windows. Finding one unlocked it seemed to melt into the
structure as it entered the home.

Meanwhile the lone figure who was leading
the others away from the home turned suddenly and narrowly avoiding
the violent slash of a saber, grabbed this nearest pursuer threw
him bodily, following up with a snap-kick to the head that broke
his neck. As the figure thrashed violently on the ground, the other
snatched up the saber and ran again with the other three in close
pursuit, swords drawn. After a while only one pursuer was very
close, the other two having fallen back a hundred yards. The
black-clad figure spun and dropped in one smooth rapid move and
slashed powerfully as the other nearly ran over him, cutting off
one of his feet. A loud roar of pain erupted and the last two
closed in, thinking that their quarry was down until they saw him
following through and rolling to his feet running away.

Approaching a tall hedge the lone figure
leapt it easily as the other two approached. As they leapt it the
lone figure appeared leaping back over the same hedge, slashing
viciously at the nearest pursuer and lopping off one of his hands.
A loud roar of pain was heard as the two came down on one side of
the hedge and the lone figure landed on the other side, rocketing
back toward the direction of the Millstone home. No one pursued the
figure and in about three minutes it arrived at the side yard of
the estate as the other figure appeared at the dormer and bounded
down to join it.

The two rocketed away to the north, putting
two miles between them and the Millstone home and then they stopped
and watched for pursuers. Seeing none they took off their hoods and
faced each other laughing, as one said “That went well. Did you
find anything?”

“Yes Li. It’s a coded letter from
Cosette.”

Approaching the Stedman house, Ian made a
wide circle, peering intently in the darkness to see if an ambush
had been set. After reconnoitering the grounds thoroughly, he began
to close on the tenant house in back. Slowly and methodically he
crept to it and listened intently. Finally he leapt to the second
story roof and tried the three dormers finding them locked.
Bounding down he circled the darkened building, concluding that it
was empty. Similarly he cleared the two barns and then carefully
moved to the manor house itself.

This one took over a half hour to
investigate being as he was alone with no help, but he finally had
gained entrance at a dormer by breaking a window and had slowly
gone through the place even to the cellar and found it empty too.
The bloodstain was still visible on the parlor floor so he
concluded that the coven had made a quick retreat. He sat down in a
large overstuffed chair and pondered the situation as he saw it. At
some point the others had returned and discovered that Grundy was
gone and a decision must have been made to either evacuate the
place, or they were all out waiting for him at the Millhouse home,
the Davis home, or the bank building. He thought
I can go to the
Millhouse’s, the Davis’s, or the bank building; or I could go to
Long Island. I wish I could find James and Melissa. I’ll go to the
Millhouse’s and if some of them are there, I’ll kill the ones I
can. That is going to have to be good enough for tonight.