Evil Is a Man

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

If you like what you're reading, let me know: SellarDhor@gmail.com. And let me know where you want the story to go and who you want Jake to end up with. And if you have any ideas for the future, let me know, I might include them.

JANUARY 3rd

"Wake up, sugar buns," Syd cooed to me and shook me awake in my bed.

"Unless you want another bullet hole in your face, you'll let me keep sleeping," I moaned.

"Nice threat, but you don't even have a gun," Syd said, pulling my covers off me.

"Come on!" I yelled. "We just got back to Della's and went to bed an hour ago!"

"Yeah, think about how I'm copin' without my beauty sleep," Syd said. "But we've got no choice. The stagecoach leaves early, and Della and Jennie already made breakfast."

"Alright, let me get dressed."

"I knew you'd come around, sweetheart."

"I'm cooperating for Della and Jennie's sake," I said. "Not for the one person responsible for my extreme tiredness and my sour disposition."

"A wise man once said, `you have no one to blame for your problems but yourself.'"

"Well, clearly that guy never met you, Syd. You are such a royal jerk; you must single-handedly be responsible for like half of the world's problems."

I yawned all through breakfast. Luckily, in addition to the tasty, simple foods like eggs, oatmeal, and fruit, they had plenty of fresh brewed coffee. As we ate, Della and Jennie took the opportunity to get to know me better, asking more and more about my life, which I was happy to share with them. They had been so candid with me the night before, it was the least I could do.

It was after Syd left the table and was chasing Jess around when Della told me, "Promise when you get to Mareshead, you'll look up my boy Parker. I can already tell that you two will hit it off. He's a wonderfully good man, and I sense the same in you."

"She's right," said Jennie. "Parker is one of the dearest people I have ever known. If I had been straight, I would have fallen for him in a heartbeat."

"He's such a gentleman."

"Syd can pretend to be a gentleman if it serves his purposes," I said.

"But Parker doesn't have to play a gentleman, he is one, through and through. He's a gentlemen to everyone, regardless of sex, age, or desirability."

Della nodded in agreement. "And not a gentleman in a belittling kind of way where he thinks just because he's stronger than you as a fanged vampire that you aren't fully capable of taking care of yourself and he needs to take care of you. No, Parker's gentlemanliness comes at the same time he compliments you and raises you up. He's a great guy."

Syd wandered over. "I'm hearing compliments coming from over here, so I can only assume you all are complimenting all my many strengths again."

"I was just saying how much I prefer Parker over you, Syd," Jennie said.

"I do wish you were more like your brother," said Della.

"Well, you are the only two souls in the Territory who prefer that sensitive, sentimental sap to a fun guy like me."

"Make that three," I said.

"You haven't even met him!"

"Right now, you are my least favorite person I know, so everyone is an improvement in comparison. I'm sure if he had been around, he would have at least let me call my family and tell them why I haven't been answering my phone."

Della gave Syd a stern, motherly look "What's this, now? They're probably worried sick."

"What was I supposed to do, have Jake call them and let them know that he's being kidnapped by vampires? Either they'll call the police or they'll call the funny farm, or both."

"I'm sure Jake is fully capable of lying to them," Jennie said. "Make up some excuse why he isn't around."

"I would guess he'll be gone for at least a few more weeks," Della said. "Just make sure the excuse is something that would plausibly cover a long span of time."

"Yeah, I could do that," I said.

"I'd rather not take the risk," Syd said.

"What about taking the risk of his family calling the police and launching a search for him?" Della asked.

"We have people in law enforcement that would--"

"Why bother testing their loyalties if we don't need to?" Della asked. "Save their favors for the important stuff."

"And tell me why you aren't Governor again, Della?" I asked.

"Because of my offensive genitalia."

"Alrighty, I'll do it."

"And from now on, let Jake speak to them at regular intervals so they don't get worried," Della said.

"Alright, Jakey, let's do this in my room."

As soon as Syd turned towards the staircase, I mouthed a big, "thank you," to Della and Jennie, and they seemed most welcome. Syd locked us in his bedroom and fished my cell phone out of his things. When he turned it on, there were all sorts of messages.

"We're just making one call to your mom, and that's it," Syd said.

"We have to call Ahmad too. And the school."

"Fine, but I want you on speakerphone the whole time so I can hear you."

First, we called my mom. She was real mad that I hadn't been returning her calls. I apologized. I told her that I was going to be taking a few weeks off of school to do a valuable internship Syd connected me with in Montana, and that I'd be living with Syd for that time. Syd had decided on the Montana part of that excuse, because he didn't want any of my friends or relatives trying to drive over for a visit. Mom didn't like the idea of me taking off school, and she wanted to talk to Syd about all of this. As soon as Syd started talking to her on speaker, she too berated him for not returning her calls. Luckily, he was oozing his charm, and wove a brilliant tale of lies, regaling her with compliments about her parental wisdom, until she was left not just accepting the internship, but pushing for me to go.

"Anyway, I never told you exactly what lovely event happened with your brother over the winter break, that's why I been trying to reach you."

"What happened?"

"The three of us were having dinner, him, me, and Minister Reed."

"Your new beau?"

"Yes, Andrew. Anyway, what should have been a pleasantly pious affair turned horrid when Jerry opened his mouth."

"Let me guess, he said something about how anti-religious he is to the Minister?"

"That I could have handled, heck, he's only been refusing to go to church since he was old enough to walk. No, this is much worse. Right there at the dinner table, right as Andrew was saying grace, Jerry tells us that he's one of them, you know, one of them homosexuals."

"Oh, no!" yelled Syd. "That's it, that boy is going straight to hell!" He had a very amused smile on his face.

"That's what I told him, Syd," she said. "And let me tell you, he didn't inform us of this in a polite manner. He informed us by telling us exactly what it is he likes to do."

"Good heavens, what did he say?" asked Syd.

"If I were to repeat it for you, I'd risk going to hell myself," she said.

"Isn't there someplace you can send him that will purge him of those unclean thoughts?" asked Syd.

"Andrew said he would try to intervene, see if he can't save the boy's soul. I'm just at a complete loss. Jake, I wish you were here to help with this."

"Mom, just promise you'll try to really listen to him. You need to get him to stop trying to offend you and get him to really open up. Try to understand his point of view."

"I'm trying. Lord knows it, but you know how he is with me. Either he's calmly sarcastic with me or he's rudely offensive. He doesn't have any other side to him. I look at him, and I see nothing of myself in him. He's too smart for his own good, just like his father was. He doesn't even have a southern accent anymore. I mean, neither do you, but you are my shining star, I never have to worry about you."

I felt sick to my stomach, and started to dread my inevitable coming out to her.

"Thanks Mom. I'd better go. Love you."

"Love you too."

As soon as I hung up, I reached over and punched Syd in the arm. "I can't believe you said those things to her about Jerry. You're not funny, Syd."

"I thought I was a riot of laughs."

"You are so not allowed to speak when we talk to Ahmad."

Ahmad was a lot harder to convince because he knew me so very well, and I had never lied to him. I think he could detect something was off, only this time, I couldn't hand the phone over to Syd for him to spin his lies. Although Ahmad was trying to be congratulatory, I could tell he was really heartbroken about my upcoming absence. He kept asking more and more details about the whole thing, perhaps trying to get a sense if there was some darker reason for my break than I was letting on. It was an awful, terrible conversation to have, and it tore my heart by the time we hung up, with him saying, "I'll consent to you bailing out on your roomy if you promise me one thing."

"What?"

"You won't be someone else by the time you come back here. Like that guy in our building, Gene, who started out so cool but quickly turned into a dick."

"I'm not going to turn into a dick."

"Well, don't turn any which way. I like ya the way you are."

I started to get choked up, and tears stung my eyes.

"You promise?"

"Yes, I promise," I barely managed to get out without my voice cracking.

After I hung up with Ahmad, I wiped tears out of my eyes, and Syd gave me the weirdest look. "What the hell's wrong with you? Please tell me somthin' got in yer eye, `cause if ya just got all weepy talking to yer friend Ah-Man, you seriously need to man-up."

"I was just thinking about how nothing will ever be the same again, not really. Because I'm not the same, I've turned into something I never asked to be. I hate that."

"Welcome to my life, Jakey. Now that you're not gonna be aging no more, yer gonna have to get used to a few new rules. You can't tell any normal people the truth out there, so you'll have to lie to all of them. For me, as soon as I've been somewhere long enough for folks to wonder why I ain't gettin' any wrinkles or gray hairs, I leave. Go somewhere new, and start all over again. And someone who is so goddamn sentimental he fuckin' cries when talking to his roommate on the phone, it'd be stupid for you ever to let yerself get attached to anyone who ages, as yer just gonna have to leave em anyway. Me, it doesn't phase me to pull the rug out from under people round me and just disappear. You ain't the same, Jakey, so I'd recommend just faking yer own death right now. Let yer family and friends grieve ya, and then never make a close connection again."

"That sounds like a hellish, abysmal existence," I said, the gravity of my whole situation really settling in for the first time. I wished so badly I could just go back to who I was before.

"It ain't so bad when yer fuckin' as good lookin' as I am," he said.

I convinced Syd to let me call the school to officially let them know I would be gone, perhaps for the entire semester. If I got out of this alive, this would save me financially, because I wouldn't be paying for classes I wasn't attending. Doing all of this made me remember just how much this whole situation was really, really atrocious.

Syd collected my phone from me again as soon as we were through.

I took a shower in their bathroom, thankful for the plumbing the house had, getting really, really clean for once. Then I got dressed and collected my things.

When Syd and I left the house, Della, Jennie, and Jess had already left for town. I was disappointed, I had hoped to say goodbye to them personally.

"How `bout it, mystery man?" asked a familiar, almost indiscernible voice. "Yous got the mark yet?"

Syd and I had come to the designated place outside of town where the stagecoach picked up its passengers and goes down the dusty dirt-road to Mareshead. We found the stagecoach already tethered to four horses, seemingly ready to go. And standing next to the beasts was the unkempt young woman who had given us our horses before, Polly. She was no cleaner than the last time I had seen her, with her long brown hair particularly filthy.

She spun me around to look at the bottom of my neck. "Oh no, they burned ya, ain't they? That why yous leavin' Fools Gold? `Cause they ain't allowin' no slaves?"

"We still don't know what they'll do to him, Polly," Syd said. "He is still markless."

"Still? By golly. But, this stagecoach is headin' to Mareshead. Yous best not go that way. They never give the Free Mark there, no ways."

"Almost never, anyway," Syd corrected. "Jake thanks you for your concern but that's where we're headed. Polly, how the hell did ya get all the way up to Fools Gold so quickly?"

"Because I brought her here." Big Horn stepped out from the back of the stagecoach, where he had been invisible to us until that moment.

"Hey Biggie," Syd said. "Didn't know you beat us here. Why'd ya bring her?"

"Ya know I won't ride in a stagecoach unless I have to. It's a White Man's contraption."

"I know, I know, ya told me hundreds of times before," Syd complained.

"If I'm forced to ride one, there's no way in the Territory that I'd let myself be driven by most of these young bucks who think the only way to communicate to their horses is with a closed fist. Polly's the sole person who treats the animals with the respect they're entitled to. So, I fetched her this morning to drive us to Mareshead."

"We's leavin' in fifteen," Polly said as she climbed up onto the driver's side of the stagecoach.

Big Horn came over and put a strong hand on my shoulder. "You look weary, Crazy Kid."

"I didn't get much sleep last night," I said, eyeing Syd angrily.

"Lettie's can have that affect on a man with little self control," Big Horn said, his tone of voice judgmental. "Or, in your case, a kid."

"It wasn't my doing! Syd was the responsible party. You see, there was this poker game--"

"Shut it!" Syd said.

"Why can't I tell him?"

"What happens in Lettie's stays in Lettie's," Syd said.

Polly erupted into a sudden bout of insane laughter. "Ha, so true Syd, so true. Yous are so clever. Yous should tell Lettie that one."

"Yeah, she can turn it into her new slogan," Syd said.

"Hello?" I asked. "That's not even original. Syd's incapable of true wit. If you hear him uttering a good line, you can bet he stole it from some poor advertising firm or another."

"Woo-wee, Jakey," Syd said. "Good to know your sleepless night didn't take the edge off your omnidirectional rage."

"Oh Syd, don't you know by now my rage is only reserved for you?"

"That's reassuring. Ya wouldn't wanna make yer sweetheart jealous, would ya? Now, let's board before all the good seats are taken." He motioned towards the side door of the dirty metal passenger cabin.

"Are you sure this rickety dinosaur is safe to ride?" I asked, looking questionably at the simple cabin and huge metal wheels.

"She's safer than any Concord ever was," Polly said, like I was supposed to know that meant. "Inspected her myself this morn."

"Alright," I said. I noticed Big Horn was climbing up on the outside seat to sit next to Polly. "You're not riding with us?" I asked him.

"I much prefer sitting up here, out in the open," he said.

I was disappointed. Big Horn had a way of keeping Syd in line. I considered sitting up top with Polly and Big Horn, but there were only two seats up there. I followed Syd into the cabin, which one boarded through rear doors. It was as filthy on the inside as it was on the outside, grimy and worn. Both the left and the right side of the cabin had a row of four hard seats in front of the side windows. The two rows faced each other.

There were two people already in the stagecoach when we climbed in. A white man I didn't know was sitting on the far left side of the cabin. He was leaning against the front wall, resting, and I realized as soon as I got a good look at his handsome face and green eyes that he was a vampire. He didn't even glance at us as we entered.

The other man I knew all too well. Tucker, the Asian cancer victim, was sprawled out on the row of seats in the right side, taking up most of the space and snoring loudly. I wondered if he had meant to be taking the trip out of town, or if he had only used the cabin as a place to sleep off his Lettie's induced drunkenness from the night before.

Syd sat down on the left side, away from Tucker's snoozing body. He took a seat not directly next to the other vampire, but with an empty seat in between, and then he pat the empty seat on the end of the row to his right, closest to me.

"I'm not sitting next to you," I said defiantly. I moved to the right side and climbed all the way to the front of the cabin, making room by pushing Tucker's head gently into the seat next to me. That left me sitting across from the new vampire, and he glanced me over as soon as I sat down. I wondered if he smelled my unusual bloodtype, and hoped he would stay in control.

After a few minutes, someone else crawled through the back door, and I turned my head to see. A white woman wearing a fancy blue mid-19th century dress that amazingly wasn't the least bit dirty, considering this entire town seemed to be carved out of dirt. She carried a large black purse with white gloved hands. "Syd Logan!" she said, her voice having just a mild Western accent. "I didn't know you were back in the Territory." She looked about thirty, was very, very beautiful, and had green eyes. Once again, I knew she was a vampire. Her blonde hair was primly pinned back in a tight bun.

"Hello, Rose Dixon," Syd said politely, but without the usual oozing charm he used for most women, especially one that attractive.

Rose smiled warmly at the vampire across from me. "Hi there, Steely."

Steely nodded at her. Then her eyes looked over at Tucker and I on the other side. I smiled politely, happy to meet anyone around here who knew how to do laundry. I stuck out my hand. "I'm Jake," I said.

"Oh," she said, not making eye contact with me and looking at my extended hand as if I had just pulled it out of my butt, refusing to shake it. She looked down at the sleeping Tucker. "Tucker, is that you?" she asked. "Tucker, don't you know you should reply to a lady like me when she talks to you? Tucker!" She kicked the sleeping man hard in the ribs with her pointy shoe.

"Ooow!" Tucker yelled, but only stirred, and continued to keep sleeping.

She tsk-tsked. "Poor thing. I don't know why the Governor has let him live for so long. He always wanted his little pets, I suppose. Well, I can see this cabin is just how I like it, segregated. I'll sit on the correct side."

She took the seat next to Syd, the farthest one in the cabin from my seat. I glared at her, but she was not making eye contact. I looked at my dark skin, and Tucker's Asian eyes, and then looked at the other side of seats, filled with three white people, and I sighed. Racial segregation would have taken place in the mid-1800's. Were there really people who wanted to keep that aspect of the Old West historically accurate in the Territory?

Polly shouted that the stagecoach was leaving, and we started to move, slowly easing off onto the dirt road.

"Wait, stop, let us board!" shouted a woman from outside.

Syd stuck his head out the window. "It's Glaucia!" he said. "Polly, stop the horses!" he shouted up.

The stagecoach pulled to a stop again, and Syd excitedly opened the back door and jumped outside. I looked out the window behind me to see what was happening. The woman who had stopped us looked to be a vampire, at least, she was the right age and was very beautiful. She was Hispanic, with dark skin and lips, and very curvaceous, filling out her colorful period dress nicely. She held the hand of a little cowboy, who couldn't have been older than five, also Hispanic.

"Woo-wee, Glaucia!" Syd hollered. "I haven't seen ya in years! I didn't know you'd be coming back."

"Jericho thought it was time," she said with a Spanish accent, her face smiling politely at Syd. She looked down at the boy next to her. "Lewis, I want you to meet your brother, Syd."

Syd's face beamed as he kneeled down to Lewis's level, and stuck out a hand. "Well, hello, lil' partner," he said.

The shy boy stuck his hand out to be shaken.

"Go ahead and give him a hug like I told you," Glaucia said, patting the boy forward.

Lewis opened his arms and hugged Syd.

"Aww, that's real sweet of ya," Syd said.

Rose looked over my shoulder and saw the two of them. "Oh, it's Glaucia. Great. As if there weren't enough swine in this stagecoach as it is." I knew she was referring to Glaucia being non-white, and I glared at Rose.

"Ya know," Syd said to Lewis, "the last time I saw you, you were just a baby."

Rose snickered, and lowered her voice so that Glaucia wouldn't be able to hear her. "That's because Glaucia ran out of Mareshead the second that child was born, carrying on about how it was no place for a baby. She insisted on having her people, one of our vampire families in Mexico, do the raising. The Governor just about had a fit when she left. The only way she got him to agree to it was by her swearing that he would be raised in the Territory ways, without any trace of the outside tarnishing him." She seemed to be talking to Steely, though he showed no sign that he was listening. "I went to the Governor, I told him that I warned him not to marry such common trash. He should have married one of us. I even offered myself to the man. But he was seduced by her exotic looks, so he paid no heed. Now, he pays the price."

Syd lifted Lewis and carried him into the stagecoach. "We have a lot of catching up to do, little bro. I think I know who my new bestie in Mareshead is gonna be."

Lewis giggled, already won over by the man. I wanted to warn him not to let him be deceived by Syd's empty charms.

Glaucia climbed into the stagecoach and Syd retook his seat. "Oh, there's only one seat left," she said, pointing at the empty one between Syd and Steely. "Lewis, why don't you sit on my lap?" I noticed she had a Spanish accent.

She moved to sit next to Syd.

"I don't think so, Glaucia," Rose cut in. "Lewis can sit here, but you can't." I wondered why Rose would permit Lewis to sit on her side, since he seemed almost as dark as Glaucia was, but then I remembered that he was half Logan, half white. Just like I was half white, but no one could tell by looking at me, I happened to get all of my mother's looks. Lewis was in the same category.

"Oh," Glaucia said passively, not sticking up for herself at all.

Rose turned her prejudiced aggression towards the snoozing Tucker. "Tucker, wake up! You have to sit up, here!" He didn't respond, so she kicked him, this time in the crotch.

"Ooow!" he cried, but then he blearily opened his eyes as he moaned. "We there?"

"No," Rose said. "You need to get your drunk self together and wake up!" She grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him into a sitting position, onto the seat on my row, next to the back door, across from her. Then she carefully cleaned her gloves off.

"Ow, my head." He grabbed a large bottle of alcohol and started to nurse it, didn't these backwoods folk ever hear of aspirin?

"Tucker, what are you doing?" I asked angrily.

"Need something to kill this hangover," he said.

"You need to quit drinking," I said.

"If the powers that be were to take my cancer away, I swear I would never, ever drink another drop."

"Oh, what a bore. Nobody cares, Tucker." Rose said. "There, you have a place to sit," she said to Glaucia.

Glaucia took the seat next to Tucker and had Lewis take the seat beside her, next to me. Polly announced we were leaving again, and the stagecoach started to move noisily down the road. I certainly never thought I would be riding in any horse-drawn vehicle in my life. The sound of the creaky, large steel wheels as they moved quickly made me wonder if this thing would hold together through the day's trip to our destination. The pretty views of the Territory were marred by the huge amounts of kicked up dust that was floating by all of the windows.

I was naturally facing the person across from me, Steely, so I looked him over as we rode. His clothes were as dirty as Tucker's, and there were streaks of dirt on his face. He seemed to be chewing on something large. He caught my eye, and was looking at me suggestively.

Weirded out, I turned my head away from Steely and looked down at Syd as he tried to ignore Rose's flirtations.

"I know I've said this before, but it bears repeating," she was telling him. "You and I would be the perfect match. My family is very powerful in the Logan Blood. A Dixon/Logan marriage would be an excellent pairing for you."

"Look, Rose..."

"Now, hold on," she said. "Everyone knows you have an obsession with life outside the Territory, for modernity. I've been studying up on modern women on the internet. Yes, I actually learned how to use a computer. I know how to dress like one, and I'm learning to get rid of this accent."

"Darlin, don't do any of that on account of me," Syd said. "I'm just not the marrying kind."

"Just think it over," she said, and then she reached in her 1800's black bag, and pulled out a laptop. I could not believe my eyes as she flipped the thing up and expertly started typing. I would have thought those types of things would have been banned here.

Lewis looked at the laptop enviously. "Mom, can I have my Battleship? Will you play with me?" he whispered to his mother.

Glaucia looked over at the boy and shushed him. "Baby, I told you not to say anything about those."

"But Mom, it's so boring here."

"You can play with your toy Indians I got you."

"They're boring. Can I at least play monopoly?"

"Lewis, quiet about that stuff, I mean it!" Glaucia looked very, very stern.

"Okay," the boy said forlornly.

Glaucia looked worriedly towards Syd and particularly Rose, but they showed no sign that they heard the quiet conversation through the noise of the horses.

"And I hate these clothes," Lewis said quietly, picking at his little boy cowboy getup. "I'm tired of playing dress up with this cowboy Halloween costume. I want my old ones back."

"Lewis, that's it!" she snapped. "I told you, if they find out you are different, they'll punish you," she whispered in his ear.

He instantly looked frightened. "Alright, Mom."

She caught me looking at them. "Please don't say anything," she said. "I can tell by your clothes that you're an outsider just like Lewis and I. Have some decency and keep that to yourself."

"Oh, don't worry," I whispered. "I won't say anything."

She smiled, then looked away from me, and got out Lewis's brand new 18th century toys for him to play with.

I was still really tired, so I leaned back against the front wall of the cabin, and tried to get comfortable enough to sleep. I was shocked to attention when Steely, out of nowhere, did the most disgusting thing imaginable. He parted his lips, and then spat out a huge wad of dark brown, putrid liquid. Before I could react, the liquid landed right on my left shoe.

"Eeeew!" I cried, pulling my foot away, totally shocked. "What's wrong with you? Chew is disgusting as it is, but don't you have enough sense to spit out the window?"

He answered by spitting again, this time on my right foot.

"Gross! You'd better stop that!"

Steely looked at me, his eyebrows furrowed. Then he opened his mouth and said something to me that was a totally incomprehensible string of mumbles.

"Hey, if you have something to say to me, maybe you should take the snuff out of your lip before you try talking," I said.

"I understand him," Tucker said.

"You could hear him through that muck?" I asked him.

"Sure," he said. "He says he can spit where he wants, and you can't do nothin' about it no how."

I glared at him, but he was right, what could I do?

He went on with his mumbling, this time some of the chew spit drooling out of his lips and staining his chin brown. He was so, so disgusting. I didn't care how good looking he was, spitting absolutely made someone the ugliest person in my eyes.

Sadly, there was nothing I could do about this. He was a vampire, much stronger than I was. I sat back down in my chair, and pulled my feet on the seat, making sure none of my body was anywhere near spitting range.

This meant, though, that I was kind of taking up a bit of Lewis's seat, though I figured he wouldn't mind, considering how small he was.

Lewis leaned over to my legs, and then took a smell. His face twisted. "Mom, he smells."

I took a whiff of my body, knowing I had just showered that morning and put on my deodorant. I did a quick breath check: minty fresh, as usual. "I think that's the chew spit you're smelling," I said.

"No, it's not," Lewis said. "It's you." He took a deep breath, and then looked into my eyes. "You smell so gooood."

That's when I noticed his eyes were green, and they seemed to harden all of the sudden, as his face went into a daze. He opened his mouth, and I could see two little, child-sized fangs start to extend.

Oh my goodness, how could I have not put two and two together before? This was Syd's little brother, of course he would be a vampire. I hadn't ever conceived that it would be possible for such a small, innocent form to have those traits. Jess, the other vampire child I had gotten to know, had been just like any normal girl. This boy was anything but.

I backed away from the kid, pushing myself as far back as I could against the front wall of the cabin. His dazed face moved closer, sniffing my body.

"Lewis, what are you doing?" Glaucia asked.

"He smells so good, Mom," Lewis said, still moving towards me.

"Look, I'm sorry," I told her. "I'm a very rare blood type."

"He's AB Negative," Syd hollered, noticing the situation.

"Ah," said Glaucia, as if that explained it all. "Sorry. Lewis has never experienced that." He grabbed her son and turned him away from me, hugging him. "Baby, I need you to stay in control."

"Okay, Mom. I'm sorry."

"Jakey, why don't ya come sit with me?" Syd asked me

"You can't be serious," Rose said. "This side is not for his kind. He is not sitting over here."

"Yes, I am," I said. I normally wouldn't have gone over there, but Rose's prejudices were enough to make my mind up. "I'm sitting there, and if you have a problem with it, maybe you'd prefer taking a seat on the side of the road."

As I took my seat, Tucker and Glaucia both smiled to themselves as Rose looked absolutely horrified. As soon as I had left my seat, Glaucia pushed her and Lewis down one seat, so her son was sitting as far away from me as they could manage, clearly as a safety precaution.

"I have no patience for racists," I said.

"Racists?" Rose asked with attitude. "What is that word?"

"Are you serious?" I asked. In fact, no one around me seemed to understand the word either; they all looked at me with blank confusion.

"Vampires don't have that word," Syd said. "There are a bunch of concepts that vampires do not know, but at the top of the lists are racism and religion, or religious prejudice. Vampires have avoided those concepts as far back as our lines go."

"Really?" I asked. "Then what label would you give Rose's prejudices?"

"She wasn't being racist, Jakey. She was being speciesist."

"That is so not a word," I said.

"Vampires are superior to humans," Rose said. "We were designed to rule them, not intermix with them."

"That's one train of thought, at least," Syd said.

"Oh, she doesn't want humans sitting over here, I get it." That would explain why she didn't have a problem with Lewis, even though he looked Hispanic. "Wait a second, I thought Glaucia was a vampire?"

"I'm flattered," she said.

"Don't kid yourself, sweetheart," Rose said to her. "You looked like a human dog from the moment my eyes set upon you."

I looked at Glaucia, and then realized her eyes were brown, not green. The irony was, Glaucia was just as beautiful as Rose. And Rose, physically speaking, was so similar to Glaucia, except she didn't age. Just that little difference I suppose was enough for her to get all high and mighty. "Well, your kind of discrimination is just as idiotic as any other," I said.

"'Sides, Jakey ain't exactly human," Syd said. "He's the special human."

Rose snapped to attention. "Oh, this is the one you've been instructed to bring to The Governor?"

"That's right."

"Ah, well then," Rose said, and I wondered if she would start treating me with more respect. "We might as well have tied him to the top of the stagecoach to save room in here." I guessed not.

"Why's that?" Syd asked.

"Because your father made up his mind," Rose said. "He wants to get a good look at him. Maybe interrogate him some. That's why it's so critical you deliver the boy unharmed. But he'll be dead within 24 hours." They were speaking softly, trying not to be overheard, which seemed futile considering I was sitting right next to them. I listened closely, my heart starting to race.

"How do you know?" Syd asked.

"Your father swore this to all of us Cabinet members." The way she said `Cabinet members' made it sound like she belonged to some super exclusive club and therefore was not just a part of a superior species, she was the crème de la crème within that species as well.

Syd shook his head. "Well, seems to me that's plain stupid." I held back a smile, thankful that Syd was at least sticking up for keeping me alive after all we had been through.

"Why is that?" Rose challenged. It was clear she agreed with Jericho on this. Probably she agreed with him on everything else too.

"'Cause the gene will just become active in the next oldest one," Syd said.

"We know who that will be," Rose said. "As soon as we kill the older brother, we'll kill the younger one too. No need to bring that one to Jericho first, either."

I boiled over with anger, hearing their plan for my little brother.

"And then what about the next one in line?" Syd asked.

"We'll find them as well, and we'll kill them."

"And the next? And the next?"

"We'll track them down and we'll kill them all," she said. "Look, everyone was shocked when the boy's gene actually activated. Most people assumed there would have been many other men older than him in the world who would have been next in line. The fact that it activated in someone so young implies that the gene is dying out. These two brothers really could be the last two on Earth with the gene."

"It's still too risky," Syd said. "It took us decades to figure out this family carried the gene. And it ain't like we're swimmin' in leads on others families that got the gene. If there were others out there, how would we ever hope to find them?"

"Your father is determined to wipe them out completely."

"I still think the best idea is to keep him alive. Just keep an eye on him."

"Well, it doesn't really matter what you think, because you have absolutely no influence over your father, as you know."

"Ya got me there," Syd said.

"Anyway, why does any of this matter to you?" Rose asked. "Since when do you have any strong political opinions? Don't tell me you've grown attached to this human dog?"

"No, absolutely not," Syd said. "You know I ain't capable of attachment. I'm just thinking strategically, is all. But yer right, I may have my opinion, but I really don't give a damn if Jericho wants to go another way. He wants to kill him, I ain't gonna be locked in my room cryin' and moanin'over it. If anything, I'll be locked in my room bedding a fine woman, having a good time."

I almost said something scathing to Syd, but I was too emotional. I was headed for my death, apparently only after being interrogated, for what reason I had no idea since I knew absolutely nothing. Worst of all, once I was dead, they would kill my brother as well. Syd's lack of loyalty towards me was the least of my concerns, and wasn't the least bit surprising.

The chattering stopped, and soon Lewis had fallen asleep against his mother. I too wanted to sleep, though I wasn't about to lean either against filthy Steely to my left, or the malicious Syd to my right. So, I leaned my head straight back, and tried to sleep that way.

Almost immediately, I felt something on my shoulder. I opened my eyes, and looked to see Syd's head resting on me. He hadn't even had the decency to remove his hat beforehand, and it was hitting me in the face with the dirty thing. I pushed him up off me.

"Jakey, I need yer shoulder to sleep on, I'm bushed."

"Too bad," I said. "You have no one but yourself to blame for that, Syd. I'm just as tired as you are."

"Well, ya can sleep on my shoulder, Jakey," he said. "Or, better yet, in my lap," he said that with a clearly sexual tone of voice.

"Once again, your offers prove to be all kinds of thoughtful, but I'll decline."

"You can sleep on my shoulder, Syd," Rose said. Why was I not surprised?

"Good to know at least someone here appreciates me."

With no further distractions, I leaned my head back, and was asleep in no time.

I must have been asleep for hours.

My anxious dreams turned very sexual, very quickly, and my body was so suddenly aroused, my dick erect, that I forced myself to wake up.

As soon as I opened my eyes, I felt that sexual ecstasy all the way through me, ecstasy that was centered on...

...the left side of my throat.

I turned my head and bumped into Steely's face. His teeth were lodged in my throat, his lips were making a fast, sucking sound, sucking sound. One of his hands held onto my body tightly, while the other was lodged in his pants, jerking away furiously.

"Ewww! Get off me!" I shouted, shaking myself out of the physical pleasure I was feeling and entering panic mode.

It seemed everyone except Rose and Steely were sleeping, and Rose was too busy on her laptop to notice anything amiss. My shouts woke everyone up.

I tried to push Steely off me, but he wasn't budging. Damn, I hated feeling so relatively weak in comparison to these vampires. "Get off me! Somebody get him off!"

Syd stood up and walked over to Steely. "Off, man!" Syd yelled, pushing his head with all of his strength away from me.

Finally, Syd's efforts succeeded, and Steely was shoved away from me. Steely was eagerly lapping up the blood on his lips with his tongue.

"Get a hold of yourself!" Syd yelled.

Steely gave us another series of mumbles, as he tried to say something but couldn't because of the snuff under his lip.

"Oh my goodness, I cannot believe you were feeding on me without even taking the chew out of your mouth. That's sickening."

"He said that he tried, but he couldn't help himself," Tucker translated. "Sitting next to you with the smell of your blood was too much for him."

Steely uttered more mumbles.

"He thought he would just take the tiniest bit of blood while you were sleeping and you would never wake up, never know the difference," Tucker continued. "But once he actually tasted you, then he knew your blood was unlike any other person's on the planet He just couldn't stop."

"Well, I'm sorry, but I do not forgive you," I said.

"Jakey, your neck," Syd said, pointing. I saw his eyes lock onto me lustfully, and his fangs pop out.

"Oh no," I said. I felt no pain on my throat, but I raised a hand to it. I could feel two large fang punctures, with blood oozing out.

I looked at the blood on my hand, and I started to feel sick. Started to feel light headed.

"He didn't close the wound!" I said.

Steely mumbled an offer to rectify that, and then came at me with his tongue out. I could see the brown tobacco juices all over it, and I backed off him, disgusted.

"Oh no, you are not touching me with that thing again."

I bunched up my shirt and put it over my neck to try to stop the bleeding. But this was not just a little cut that would be easily patched up. These were holes to my arteries. And whatever magic a vampire's mouth does when it bites into a victim was starting to wear off. The pleasure of the feeding was long gone, and now the residual numbness was fading into pain.

If that wasn't bad enough, across the stagecoach aisle from me, I could see little Lewis starting to freak out. His eyes were transfixed on my neck, and his fangs were out. Glaucia was trying desperately to hold onto him, but he broke free from her.

He clamored across the aisle and started to climb up my body, moving lightening fast, his innocent face being replaced by pure, evil hunger.

"Lewis, look!" Glaucia said, standing up behind us. She had a knife in her hand, and she raised it to her throat. She cut into the skin there, and blood started oozing down her neck as well.

Lewis sniffed the air, and turned his head to face her. As soon as his eyes latched onto that neck, he stopped climbing me, and froze.

"Come to mama, Lewis," Glaucia said, beckoning him. "This can be your early dinner."

Vampire Lewis pounced like an animal across the aisle, jumping right into his mother's arms. Instantly, his lips were locked onto her neck, and she collapsed back down into the seat.

Seeing her blood and especially my own was too much for me, and I fell over, my head spinning. Though when my head landed on Syd's seat, being in a lying position kept me from fainting entirely. I held my wound, the pain increasing.

"Syd, can you get Big Horn to close my wound?" I asked.

"He's riding up top, Jakey. There's no getting him now."

"Alright, then I need you to close up my wound then." I couldn't believe I was saying that.

"As always, it would be my pleasure."

"That's exactly what I don't want. Just try to do it with as little of pleasure as possible."

His fangs were still extended as he moved on me, lying on top of me and putting his lips around my wound. Instantly, the pain went away, and the pleasure returned.

After the pleasure went on for too long, I raised an eyebrow. "Syd, it feels more like you're sucking than it feels like you're licking."

He raised his face. "Hey, this is the price I pay for my services," he said, his usually pearly white smile red with blood. "Steely was right, you're hard to resist."

He lowered his face to my neck again, and I felt the sucking resume.

I could feel his dick bursting through his jeans, it was so huge, totally rock hard. He ground it against my own package, sticking his rough hand down the back of my pants and grabbing my butt and he continued to suck.

"Syd, that's enough, there's not going to be anything left when you're done!"

"Syd, that's enough, there's not going to be anything left when you're done!"

I felt him licking the wound repeatedly, and then his lips finally left my neck. I put a hand to my skin just to ascertain that the skin was healed. It was.

I felt light headed, but forced myself to sit up. Syd sat back down in his seat as well.

Across the aisle from us, Lewis was still feeding on his mother. "Alright, baby, that's enough for today."

We heard unhappy moans from Lewis.

"You can have more tomorrow."

Finally, he started to lick her wound too, stemming it.

I noticed everyone else was looking at them with disgust in their eye. "What is it?" I whispered to Syd.

"She's letting the boy feed off of her as his main source of blood," Syd said. "For a mother to let this happen when the child is that age, there's something, uh, taboo about it."

"Oh."

I heard a loud whistle from outside the stagecoach. "At attention, folks!" I heard Polly yell. "We gots company!"

Both Syd and I spun around and looked out the window. Right away, we could see what Polly was signaling. An unknown rider was approaching us from the side.

"Ya want me ta stop?" Polly asked.

"Damn, ya see who it is?" Syd asked me. "Face look familiar?"

I squinted, trying to focus on the face of the man on horseback through the dust in the air. I saw that black beard, and I knew right away. "It's Jeremiah," I said, not at all pleased to see him again.

"No Polly, keep ridin,'" Syd hollered through the window.

Jeremiah came in closer, and I realized he had a revolver in his hand. "You'd best halt, missy," Jeremiah yelled at Polly.

"These horses don't stop, not `tll we get to Mareshead good and proper," Polly said.

"You'd best be reconsidering that," Jeremiah said. "I know ya got Jake hidin' out inside."

I waved at him through the window. "No one is hiding, Jeremiah," I said.

Seeing my face just seemed to incite him. "That's who I come for," Jeremiah said. "That boy is rightfully mine. Hand him over, and no one has to get hurt. He's my rightful property."

"Hey, did you ever stop to consider that I am a free human being?" I asked. "I make my own choices about who I go with, and I don't belong to anyone."

"You can just shut yer pretty mouth there, boy," Jeremiah yelled. "This is of no concern of you. This is between me and Syd Logan."

"What? That's completely ridiculous," I said.

"Jake's not coming with you," Syd said. "That's my last word. I won that hold `em match."

"You cheated!"

"Not like you didn't cheat, ya bastard!"

"I never!"

Rose rolled her eyes and tightened her bun. "This is so ridiculous," she said. She turned around to look out the window as well. "Sir, if you've got a complaint, some sort of claim to this boy, why don't you go through the proper channels to have the Governor decide this issue with legal and official jurisdiction?"

"How's this for legal and official jurisdiction?" he asked, then he lowered his revolver and aimed right towards us.

"Get down!" Syd yelled, but the shot blast came before we could react.

"Ah!" I heard Rose scream as the glass shattered in front of us. All three of us ducked down, luckily unhurt.

"What impudence!" Rose said.

"That was just a warning shot!" Jeremiah yelled.

Syd went into his pack and got out his antique rifle. He loaded it, and then stuck the muzzle out of the window.

There was a loud bang, and then Jeremiah's hat went flying off his head, smoking.

"No, that was a warning shot!" Syd yelled. "We got three angry vampires to your one. I know yer damn old and damn strong, Jeremiah. I think ya figure ya might be able to tussle `round with me and survive, just maybe, though I'm damn strong too. But see that angry injun sitting shotgun? He's older than shit and stronger than any o' us. So, seeing how you been so smart in the poker games, you should be able to see pretty damn clearly that it's time to fold here."

"Believe yer right Syd, I hate to fight outnumbered." He gave us an evil look. "But let it be known. This won't be the last you see of me."

"Wow, can't get anymore clichéd Old West villain than that," I said.

And with those last words, he was off, pulling his horse back away from the stagecoach until his disappeared in the dust.

"What was that about, Mommy?" Lewis asked, looking out the window.

"Don't worry about it, baby," Glaucia said. "He's gone."

"No he isn't," Lewis said. "Look!"

We all turned our heads to look back out the window. There, through the dust, came Jeremiah's horse again. Only this time, he was flanked by two other cowboys.

"Holy shit," Syd said.

"We got incoming on this side too!" Glaucia said, pointing through her window on the other side, where two more riders were approaching.

"Damn, it's the whole Riley clan!" Syd yelled.

"Should I stop now?" Polly yelled from up above.

"No, whatever they do, keep movin!'" Syd yelled.

The cowboys started to pull out their revolvers and fire at us, so everyone in the cabin ducked down out of the way of the windows. Between shots, Syd stuck the muzzle of his rifle out of the window and shot back. Soon, the window by Tucker and Glaucia had shattered as well.

Drunk Tucker grabbed his own rifle and stood up on the seat, using his upper body to cover half the window, leaning out and taking aim with his gun. "I gots this side covered!"

"Tucker, you're opening yourself up for attack!" I yelled, trying to pull the man back down.

"I don't care," he said. "I'm a ticking time bomb any way." He started to shoot, but his aim seemed horribly off. Instead of holding the gun with any sort of authority, he was waving it around drunkenly.

"The only thing you'll ever shoot with that aim is your own face," I said. "Please be careful."

"Care is for the damned!" he yelled, which seemed to sound a lot cooler than it made any sense.

On the floor, Glaucia was bodyshielding Lewis from the bullets, while Steely sat on his seat just like normal, stuffing more chew into his mouth and generally not showing any acknowledgement of us being under attack.

Rose again was brave enough to stick her head up to address Jeremiah. "Do you know who you are dealing with here, Jeremiah Riley?" she asked. "You have the Governor's most valued Cabinet member in here!"

"I don't give a shit!" Riley yelled. "The Governor has no authority in the Riley house!"

"Well, I'm willing to make a deal with you in order to stop these attacks," she said.

"You gonna hand over the boy?" Jeremiah asked.

"I would do that at a drop of a hat," she said. "But it happens the Governor absolutely wants that boy alive. But we've got three other humans here, you can have them all!"

"Hey, I's got the free mark!" Polly countered. "I can't be sold!"

"Oh, anything's for sale, human," Rose said.

"I don't think the Governor would appreciate his wife being pawned off like this," Glaucia said.

"Be quiet, you human ape."

"Are any of them AB negative?" Jeremiah asked.

"Not me," Polly said.

"Nope," Tucker said.

"O Positive," Glaucia answered.

"No deal!" Jeremiah yelled at Rose. "It's the boy or nothin.' And we're perfectly willing to kill everyone who stands in our way." He continued to shoot at the cabin.

Glaucia continued to lie on top of Lewis, protecting him. She looked back at us angrily. "This is completely ridiculous," she said. "All this gunfire. They'll kill us all."

"Just stay down and keep Lewis covered, Glaucia!" Rose barked.

"Please, just give into his demands!" Glaucia said in desperation. "Think of poor Lewis! The longer this goes on, the greater the chances are that he'll be killed!"

"What are you suggesting?" Syd asked.

"That we hand over this Jake and put an end to this pointless fighting," Glaucia said.

I couldn't believe it. Glaucia, once so polite and meek towards me, was now willing to bargain with my freedom.

"Hey, we are more than outnumbered here," she said. She looked at me in the face. "Are you really willing to hold onto your freedom and comfort here in exchange for all of our lives? They don't even want to kill you. But disobeying them means all of our deaths. Think of little Lewis here. Think of the girl who is driving this thing. What kind of soulless person are you to let them die for you?"

I shook my head sadly. "She's right. I can't believe I'm about to do this." I turned my head towards the window, out towards Jeremiah on horseback. "We give up!" I said. "I agree to your terms! I'll go with you!"

"'Bout time you came to yer senses!" Jeremiah spat. "You'll learn to like serving the Rileys soon enough, I'm sure."

"No!" Rose said, sticking her head beside me. "He has no authority to give that order! We do not agree to these terms."

"Please, let them take him!" Glaucia urged Rose.

"The Governor wants him alive," Rose said.

"The Governor wants his child alive," Glaucia said.

Rose tuned back towards Jeremiah. "Look, let's make a deal. The Governor wanted him alive, but I'm willing to kill him right now in exchange for our safety."

"Yes, one life for the lives of the rest of us," Glaucia said.

"Absolutely not! The boy means nothing to me dead!" Jeremiah said.

"There's no way the Governor will ever consent to you keeping the boy alive!" Rose said to Jeremiah, and then tucked her head back down before he could shoot her.

"The Governor would be more than willing to give up this boy in exchange for the safety of his heir," Glaucia said.

"Don't be presumptuous. You don't know the Governor like I do," Rose said.

"Really? I am his wife!"

Rose's face turned livid. "You are the wife he barely knows because you seduced your way into his bed and got pregnant, making him marry you to make the child his legitimate heir! And then the second he was born, you ran off again. Believe me, as far as the Governor is concerned, the two most important people on this stagecoach are Jake and I. You are so far down the list it's not even funny."

Glaucia looked horrified. "And the Governor's two male heirs? You don't think he has some stake in their safety?"

"Sure, but they would rate below the safety of Jake and myself," Rose said. "He doesn't even know Lewis yet."

"Well what about Syd, his proper heir?" Glaucia asked.

"Ha ha, he doesn't give a shit about me," Syd said.

"The Governor views Syd as his biggest failure."

"Yup. That's pretty much what everyone thinks of Syd," I said.

"I don't accept this. Don't accept this at all." Glaucia fished through her things and pulled out her cellphone. "I'm going to get him on the line. We'll see if he's willing to trade Lewis's life for this Jake."

"Fine, you do that," Rose said.

"Damnit, he's not answering!" she said after a few rings. "I'll keep trying."

"And you!" Rose said, pointing her finger towards Steely, the one person who had stayed totally silent through this whole thing.

"What did I do?" he asked, letting some tobacco spit ooze out in the process.

"Nothing but sit on your butt, that's the problem. Pick up a gun and help us fight them off."

Steely said something in his mumbling way.

"He says this ain't his fight," Tucker said.

"It is now," Rose said. "I'm giving you an order as the Governor's Cabinet member. Don't forget that we're headed to Mareshead. The Governor will be waiting to reward those who helped his cause here, and punish the poor souls who didn't."

"Fuck!" Steely said, that much was clear, and then the rest was incomprehensible, but he grabbed a gun and took a position on the right side of the stagecoach, covering the same window that Tucker was mostly failing to cover. As soon as he started shooting, the riders on that side started to pull back. I wondered if perhaps we would be able to fight them off after all.

Beside me, Syd yelled out the window up to the top of stagecoach. "BH, any chance that you can deal some damage with your portals?"

"I can't open any portals as long as we're moving!" he shouted down.

"That's right," Syd said. "Well, you're only so much use to us standing up there, looking intimidating." Syd grabbed a revolver out of his bag. "I'm gonna hand this Colt to you, BH," he said as he started to climb halfway out of window, holding the gun up.

"What if I don't know how to use that thing? I'm just a stupid injun, after all."

"Alright, I'm sorry for calling you that, but I wanted to make you sound scary. Now, take this gun before I get shot!"

I heard another gunshot go off, and then Syd started screaming.

"Ack, too fuckin' late now, Big Horn!" he yelled, pulling his body back inside the stagecoach, the gun still in his hands.

"That's the second time I shot you, you bastard!" Jeremiah yelled.

I gasped, seeing the back of Syd's shirt turn red with blood.

"Damnit!" he said, reaching out to feel behind him.

"Syd, are you okay?" Rose asked.

"I guess so, seems it got stopped at my rib," he said. "But it hurts like all hell. Lord knows I don't like being shot."

"Let me help you get the bullet out," Rose said, and she started to open his shirt and inspect the wound.

Syd handed me the revolver. I looked at the thing, and suddenly was very annoyed with myself that I hadn't bothered to learn how to use one of them. "Jakey, you hand this to Big Horn," he said.

"What, are you nuts?" I asked. "I'll get shot sooner than you did!"

"He won't heal like you will, Syd," Rose said.

"Think about it," Syd said. "What good is Jakey to them if he's got holes in him? Trust me, he's the last person they'll shoot."

"Syd--"

"Jakey, just do it!" Syd snapped.

"Fine!"

I moved towards the open window, sat on the seat, and leaned out the window.

"Stop yer shootin,'" Jeremiah yelled. "That's him!"

I guessed Syd was right. I looked up at the top of the stagecoach. Polly was still in the driver's seat, keeping those sweaty horses moving fast. Big Horn was now standing on the very top of the stagecoach, his spear in hand, waiting patiently, looking as relaxed as ever. I handed him the gun.

"I don't need the White Man's weapon," he said calmly. "I have the spear of my ancestors. And my current tactic is working beautifully."

"What tactic is that, exactly?"

"I'm drawing their fire to me," he said. "Away from Polly and the horses, and away from the windows."

One of the Riley men fired right at Big Horn, and I gasped. But Big Horn seemed to know it was coming before I did. He dodged so quickly to the left his body blurred as he moved.

"See?"

"How'd you move that fast?" I asked him.

"Vampires are really fast," he said. "And I'm a really old vampire." There came another shot from the other side of the stagecoach, and Big Horn quickly moved his staff in front of him, right in the line of fire. "That time I wasn't ready," he said. "You were distracting me." He showed me the bullet lodged in his staff. "See? Ruined my favorite weapon."

A brave Riley man pulled his horse suddenly right against the stagecoach. He yanked his feet off of the stirrups and kneeled directly on the saddle. Then, I couldn't believe my eyes: he leapt off of that horse, landing up on the stagecoach top, right next to Big Horn. It was a feat no human would be able to pull off.

I pointed at him, but Big Horn already knew. He turned around, and the two started fist fighting.

"Don't be foolish, man," Polly yelled when she saw this intruder. "Stand down now so we can all go home without anymore holes in our bodies. Fightin' is not the way."

But he paid absolutely no regard to her, swinging at Big Horn instead.

The outlaw put up a real good fight, but soon Big Horn had knocked the guy off the stagecoach. It would have surely killed a human, but I assumed the fall would not kill a vampire, though without his horse, there wasn't much possibility that he'd be catching up with us again.

"I think they'd all feel much more secure if you had this gun," I said.

He took it from me, and then handed it to Polly. "You can keep this. I'm doing just fine without it."

"I wouldn't give it up so soon, if I were you," said a familiar voice, and I saw Jeremiah had somehow crept his way onto top of the stagecoach.

Jeremiah body slammed Big Horn, taking him by surprise, and knocking him off the top. I gasped as he fell, but he caught the horizontal bar along the edge of the stagecoach with his hand, and instead of landing on the ground, he slammed into the back wall of the craft. Then, still holding on, he pushed off the stagecoach side with his legs, and his body flew acrobatically into the air, doing a full flip upwards before he let go of the bar and landed back on his feet, right next to Jeremiah.

Holy crap, he hadn't exaggerated when he said he was fast.

As the two of them started exchanging blows, I slid back down into the cabin. Rose and Syd had removed the bloody bullet, thank goodness they had done this without me having to see it. Syd seemed healed once again and was retrieving his dropped gun when another Riley man jumped through the window, scrambling into the cabin.

Glaucia screamed, and pushed Lewis, who was crying now, as far away from the vampire as possible. Syd was right in front of him, so he punched the guy a couple times, knocking the man's revolver to the floor.

Angry, the man's right fist suddenly turned grey and seemed to harden. I had seen Syd's fist do that a couple of times back in Vegas, it was really bizarre. The man used his rock hard fist to slam into Syd's face. While his previous blows hadn't fazed Syd much, this one single punch sent his head back reeling, and he took a couple steps back, grabbing his jaw in pain.

"What was that, uh, thingamabob?" I asked no one in particular.

"Steel fisticuffs," Tucker answered. "You ain't never seen those before?"

"How do they do that?"

"All fanged vamps from the Logan Blood have that ability," he said.

"Damn, that hurt!" Syd yelled as he rubbed his jaw, snapping it back into place with a disgusting crack.

"It really turns his fist as strong as steel?" I asked.

"No, it ain't really as strong as steel," Tucker said, his words still slurred through his drunkenness. "But it'll break through any rock, you can be damn sure."

"Fine," Syd said as he regained his composure and got to his feet. "Ya wanna bring out the big guns, huh? You wanna fight dirty? I can do dirty."

Syd's right fist turned oddly grey as well, and then he slammed it towards the Riley outlaw. The man reacted by raising his own steel fist and blocking the blow with it. As the two fists made contact, there came a loud clanging sound, and both of their hands recoiled back from the impact.

"So how come they don't just keep their fists like that all the time?" I asked.

"Well, that's the drawback of the ability," Tucker said.

Syd pulled his right steel fist back and once again slammed it towards the other man. Once again, he moved his steel covered fist to block him. Only, a split second before Syd's punch hit, the man's fist reverted from steel back to the normal shade of his flesh.

This time when Syd's punch hit, it slammed through the man's normal fist, sending him recoiling in pain as there came a noise of breaking bones. The man held onto his hand, and it was clearly useless and broken, though I guessed for vampires, this state was only temporary.

"The steel doesn't last long," Tucker continued. "The stronger the vamp is, the longer they can keep the steel going. But after they finish, it will be several minutes before they can charge it up again."

Syd's hand still remained in this form, and he was swinging, trying to hit the man's head. The man dodged his punches, and seemed to know he was outmatched here. He went for his fallen revolver with his left hand, and lifted it up to shoot into Syd's face.

Syd was too fast for him, though. He spun around deftly and bit into the attacker's arm with his suddenly extended fangs.

"Curses!" the man said, then his eyes shut and he fell to the ground.

"What just happened?" I asked.

"Well, you just witnessed the other Logan Blood power," Tucker said. "When the vamps bite someone, they can choose to release a toxin into their blood that makes them fall asleep."

"But it never lasts long at all," Rose said. "So we only have a few moments to act."

"We should throw him off the stagecoach," I said, knowing it wouldn't kill him.

"Or, we could tie him up," Syd said.

"No, I'm administering the only punishment this traitor deserves," said Rose with prim coldness. From her bag, she pulled out a long, very sharp machete.

"Lewis, don't look," Glaucia said, and she covered his face with her body.

"Oh god, he'll see far worse than this soon enough, believe me," Rose said, mocking Glaucia's protection. Suddenly, Rose slammed the weapon down into the throat of the man, though with her limited strength, she only got about halfway through. She raised her blade up out of his throat. His blood was spurting everywhere, making a huge mess of the stagecoach and making me feel faint. "Syd knows I always get them on the second swing," she said.

She raised the blade above her head again.

I gasped as I saw the man's eyes flick open, see the pain he must have been feeling on his face.

The blade started to come down towards his head.

The gasping vampire lifted the revolver in his left hand and pulled the trigger. Rose was knocked back, and I heard her let out a painfully surprised scream as she dropped the machete.

Reacting fast, Steely picked up the fallen machete and slammed it through what was left of the neck of the vampire, cutting through entirely. So that was what it took to kill a vampire. I hoped I would never have to do it personally, it was so terribly brutal.

Rose gasped for air and fell back onto the seat. Her own blood was soaking through the fabric of her pretty dress around her chest. Her eyes started to roll back into her head, clearly in shock.

"BH, you better get down here!" Syd yelled.

Big Horn swung down acrobatically through the window and into the cabin with us.

"I just knocked their chief onto the ground. Oh, I see we have some damage." He kneeled down to look at Rose's chest wound. Meanwhile, the other three vampires in the cabin all had their teeth extended excitedly.

"How bad is it?" I asked him.

"Real bad," Big Horn said. "If we don't get her to Doc Logan real quick, she won't survive this."

"Can't she heal herself?" I asked. "You know, since she's a vampire and all?"

"No, Crazy Kid. Female vampires have no more ability to heal than regular humans."

"BH, you've got to take her to Della," Syd said.

Big Horn nodded, lifted Rose up carefully in his big arms. Syd opened the back door and Big Horn jumped out carefully with her. I watched as we rode away from them until I saw him open a new portal and run through, disappearing into the safety of Fools Gold. I hoped he made it to Della in time, but also, I felt the sudden pang of losing our strongest ally here, as well as my only real friend.

We shut the back door again, and locked it. Lewis was still crying, clearly traumatized by all this. His mother was keeping his eyes closed as she protected him, but there was no stopping his sense of hearing. Glaucia was still desperately trying to get a hold of her husband on her cell phone. Tucker resumed his posts guarding both of the windows with their guns.

I noticed for the first time that Steely was on the ground, licking/sucking up all the spilt blood that was on the ground from the headless vampire body, his face covered in blood. Even more disgusting, he was clearly so turned on, he was dry humping the body beneath him. I wondered if he had been doing that the whole time since Rose had been shot.

"Eew, Steely, please get a hold of yourself!" I snapped.

"Can't let this blood go to waste," he said, his mouth so full of blood I barely could hear him.

"He's right, Jakey," Syd said. "He killed him, so he got a claim to the blood."

"Drinkin' fanged vampire blood gives the vamps a lot more strength than human blood," Tucker said. "Especially so if they kill the vampire."

"And especially if the vampire is old and strong," Syd said.

"Well, it's plain disgusting to watch," I said.

"Fuckin' avert yer virgin eyes then, Jakey."

I looked away. "But gross, I can still hear the sick, sick gargling sounds Steely is making as he gulps down the blood."

"Well, get the fuck over it," Syd said.

"How many riders were there, Jakey?"

"Five, including Jeremiah," I said. "Big Horn took out Jeremiah and one other rider."

"One of them is getting' eaten by Steely as we speak. That means we still have two more attackers to deal with." He jumped up out the window and effortlessly climbed onto the top of the stagecoach. "Hand me my weapon, Jakey!"

I grabbed Syd's revolver and leaned up out of the window, finding him right where Big Horn had been fighting Jeremiah earlier.

As I handed Syd his firearm, I saw one of the two remaining riders getting close to the front of the stagecoach, up by Polly and the horses. Polly noticed the man. "It's not too late to stop this heap o' trouble," she said. "Please, just lay down the weapon and we can all go home without any violence."

The man responded by lifting his rifle and firing into the head of one of the back horses. My heart quivered, it was so awful to see that poor animal being treated like that. The horse clearly was dead, its head being completely shattered, and its body fell off and to the side of the stagecoach, and the whole craft lurched suddenly, almost knocking me out of the window.

"Nooooo!" Polly screamed, awash in emotion. She decisively grabbed her revolver, which so far had been untouched at her side, and aimed it right at the face of the vampire. A huge blast went off, and then the vamp fell off his horse and onto the ground. "See? Doesn't feel so good to have your face blown off, does it?" she yelled back to the vampire. I couldn't imagine how he would survive such a wound, but since Syd survived something similar, it certainly wasn't out of the question for a vampire.

Polly reached over and quickly untied the remaining reins that were holding onto the dead horse's body, dragging it alongside us, and soon the horse was fading into the distance.

"Polly, what's the damage?" Syd asked.

"We lost a lot of our power without that horse," she said. "There's no way we can keep this much speed goin' if this attack continues much longer."

"I don't think we'll have to," Syd said. He pointed to the last remaining rider, coming closer, trying to get a good shot of Syd with his revolver.

As soon as the rider got close, Syd did a bold, unexpected move: he jumped with his vampire strength off the top of the stagecoach. I couldn't believe he landed the jump because the rider was so many yards away, but he did. He landed straddling the horse, and started to wrestle with the horseman, trying to unseat him. The horseman punched him with a steel fist, and then the two of them pulled back and to the left, going off out of sight off the dusty road.

"Should I keep going?" Polly asked.

"Yes, keep going," I said.

I slid back down into the cabin of stagecoach.

"Are they all gone?" Glaucia asked hopefully.

"Yes, you can relax now."

Tucker and Steely put away their guns and sat back down. Just when Glaucia let out a sigh of relief and let go of Lewis, a loud cracking noise beneath us made everyone jump.

I looked down. A hardened, grey fist was poking through a large crack in the floor. Glaucia screamed as the fist broke through more and more of the wood floor. I could see a man coming through the hole he just made from underneath, saw the familiar black beard of Jeremiah as he pulled himself completely up into the cabin. When Big Horn knocked him off the stagecoach, he must have found a way to hold on underneath. He looked profoundly angry as he got to his feet.

Jeremiah sniffed the air, and then turned to face me. He looked at me with angry desire. "I'm here to collect my things. I could smell you from under the stagecoach, boy."

"Please don't hurt us," Glaucia pleaded, Lewis clutched to her bosom. "He's willing to go with you willingly if you agree not to hurt us." With Rose no longer here to give orders, there was no one keeping me from going with him willingly.

"Oh, but there's still someone here who needs some serious hurtin.'" He lifted the decapitated head of the vampire from the floor. "Which one of you killed my son?"

Steely looked at him fiercely, and let out a fresh string of mumbles.

"I'm the one who killed him, and he deserved to die," Tucker translated.

Jeremiah turned his angry glare towards poor Tucker. "Well then, looks like you'll be joining him."

"No, no, no!" Tucker said. "I was just, uh, interpreting for that guy! I didn't kill nobody!"

Jeremiah turned back to face Steely, who was standing tall as his stuffed the end of his chew into his mouth. His right hand hardened and turned grey, then started swinging madly at Jeremiah. The black- bearded Hispanic man almost was knocked off balance, but took a step back, recovering.

Jeremiah raised his own grey right fist and hurled in towards Steely's face, but just like Syd had done, Steely blocked it with his fist. After an initial clang bounced the fists apart, the two of them ended up with their steel knuckles pressed against each other, each one trying to out muscle the other.

Just when it seemed Steely might have started to get the edge on their brute strength competition, Jeremiah raised his left fist, which I noticed had turned hard as well. He slammed his second steel fist into the face of Steely with the full mass of his body.

Steely's nose completely shattered, and he reeled back, moving his hands to his face. Jeremiah, acting fast, as his hands had returned then to flesh, picked up the bloody machete from the floor. With a single, well-placed hack, he decapitated Steely with the same blade that decapitated his son minutes ago.

Steely's head hit the ground first, then his body followed. I was horrified; the blood was making me faint, and I had to quickly lie down to keep from going black. But most of all, I felt somehow responsible for Steely's death. He hadn't been my favorite person by any stretch of the imagination, but he hadn't even wanted to fight, yet was ordered to protect me. He gave up his life for absolutely nothing, Jeremiah still having been victorious in the end.

Jeremiah started to hastily devour the blood of his fallen vampire opponent, treating the body just as Steely had recently done to the Riley son.

"There," Jeremiah said. "Now that the debt has been repaid, and I've got the boy, the only one that still has it comin' to them is Syd Logan, that bastard. The rest of ya'll can live. Now, tell yer driver to do the smart thing and stop this stagecoach so we can take our leave."

"Polly, stop the stagecoach!" Glaucia yelled, and moments later, the horses were brought to a halt.

"Time for you come with me, boy," Jeremiah said. "Maybe one day you'll come to appreciate your new life of servitude in the Riley house."

I shuddered to think what this future held for me. "Don't count on it."

"Wait, not so fast," Tucker said in his drunken slur, raising his pistol and pointing it at the bandit. "I'm too devoted to the Governor to sit idly by and let you take this boy. I used to be in his Cabinet myself, before the liquor got to me. It wouldn't be right not to fight here to the end."

Tucker squeezed the trigger, and a huge noise erupted. The bullet, not surprisingly, missed its mark due to Tucker's unsteady hands. Jeremiah calmly head-butted the man, knocking him unconscious. With that threat quickly ended, he grabbed me and pulled me to my feet.

Jeremiah opened the back door of the stagecoach, and then both of us turned to face the road back to Fools Gold. As I looked towards the horizon, I thought I saw some distant figure, and I had to blink the dust out of my eyes before I could be sure what I was seeing.

Amazingly, Big Horn was on horseback, a good football field's length away, riding fast towards us. Just behind him was a rider that I recognized and never thought I would be happy to see, Sheriff Towerly. Behind him were about twenty other men on horseback, who were dressed like Civil War cavalry, all with rifles.

"Damn you Sheriff!" Jeremiah said. "This ain't over!" He let me go and ran off the road, disappearing into the brush. He knew that if he held his ground or tried to take me with him, there was no way he could win.

By the time Big Horn reached us, Polly, Glaucia, and Lewis were all overjoyed. After dropping Rose off at Della's clinic, Big Horn had found the Sheriff, and he assembled the unit of the Governor's forces. They all went back through Big Horn's portal and caught up with us. The Sheriff told us they would escort us the rest of the way to Mareshead, which made Glaucia very happy.

Syd showed up out of nowhere riding the horse of the outlaw he attacked. There was no sign of the original rider. "Hello Sheriff," Syd said when he saw Towerly leading this new cadre of horsed vampires. "Thanks for comin' to our rescue, but there was no need. I just took care of the last of the men myself."

Big Horn climbed around the top of the stagecoach to show himself to Syd. "Syd, how many times have I told you? The hawk never leaves the nest unprotected, not even to dispatch a hazard. If it wasn't for me and Towerly, you'd be coming back to a stagecoach with one less Crazy Kid inside."

"Sorry, BH, I guess my nesting instinct just isn't up to snuff." He gave the horse to Polly and she tied it to the stagecoach before he climbed back into the cabin. "Wow, I love what you done with the decoratin,' sweetheart," he said to me, looking at the floor. "Random holes in the floor and insane amounts of gore. Just what this boring stagecoach needed to liven up the rest of the trip."

"I'm so glad you can find gallows humor in a bloody massacre, Syd. I'm always amazed how level-headed and healthy you are psychologically."

"Yup. Never knew a more wholesome fella than me," Syd said.

Tucker roused himself again, complaining of a new pain, this time on the outside of his head, and drinking a whole lot more alcohol to compensate. Some of the Calvary men came in and cleaned up the bodies that were lying on the floor, which at least would make the rest of the trip somewhat tolerable for me, even though Syd once again was sitting beside me.

I noticed when we got back on the road, the Civil War soldiers on horseback were riding along close with us, keeping us safe with their escort. I looked up at a couple of them, realizing just how much those old pictures of Civil War soldiers in their uniforms the men here looked like, only in those pictures, the men always looked malnourished, toothless, and anything but attractive, while these men looked quite dashing in those uniforms, all of them handsome and muscular and definitely vampires.

"What's with these guys?" I asked Syd. "We didn't come across some of those Civil War reenactment oddballs, did we? I could never understand why anyone would be that excited about reliving one of the most brutal periods in our history."

"No, those guys aren't some sad history nerds, they're Logan armed forces. All of our military are stuck in the Civil War era, you'll find."

"I just noticed that they're all wearing grey. And here I forgot my confederate flag at home."

"It ain't always been grey," he said. "My granddaddy was a Union supporter, and his men were always dressed in blue. He was a stark opponent of slavery or racism. But Jericho switched them to grey, being a supporter of slavery. Though, he never really got that the slaves used to all be black. None of these soldiers in grey do either. Anyway, Jericho pretends that we always supported slavery. A bit of renditionist history, if ya ask me."

"Uh, I think you mean revisionist history," I said.

"Nope, I meant what I said, renditionist history."

"That's not even a term. What is that supposed to mean?"

"You know, renditionist history. When one person's rendition of the past changes from how the actual history happened. What the hell is your phrase supposed to mean?"

I rolled my eyes, still feeling too emotionally worked up to bother arguing with him over his own stupidity. I still had the guilt of Steely's death in my mind, as well as my heart still racing from all the adrenaline it had gotten. I never thought it would only be a matter of minutes after that I fell asleep.

"Arrivin' in Mareshead! Yous best be exiting now!" Polly's voice awoke me from sleep. We were stopped, and Syd was pretending to be a gentleman and helping Glaucia and Lewis off the stagecoach.

"Tucker, wake up, we're here," I said, pushing his snoring body.

"Ten more minutes," he mumbled.

Figuring he was a lost cause, I gathered up my things and prepared to leave the stagecoach, only something seemed to keep my feet from moving. I knew I was walking into my imminent death, preceded by some sort of bodily torture. I was finding it very difficult to bravely just walk on through those doors.

I felt I needed God's courage with me, so I glanced around to make sure I was alone; only the sleeping Tucker remained within view. I pulled out that cross my mother gave me and I held it in my right hand while I dropped to my knees and shut my eyes.

Please, Lord, give me courage.

I brought my clasped hands to my mouth and kissed the cross.

Please give me courage to face whatever fate you need me to go through, and I beg that you keep my brother, mother, and friends safe.

"I thought I said for yous to be exiting!" came Polly's voice. "Maybe you came to yer senses, chose to stay far away from that rattlesnake pit of a house, huh? Wait, what are yous doin' there on the ground?" I could feel her footsteps on the stagecoach floor.

"I'll just be a moment, Polly. I'm praying."

"Prayin?'" she asked, shocked. "Prayin?' You ain't allowed no prayin!'"

"I'm almost done, just give me a moment, please."

"You one of them religious fanatics, ain't ya?" she asked. "Come to brainwash all of us into yer cult of death, have ya? Well, I ain't becoming one of yer mindless followers, that's fer damn sure."

"Polly, I'm not a--"

"Why, Sheriff Towerly's right outside, and ya know what they do to those fanatics, he'll throw you straight in jail the first time he sees it. And second time too, and then he'll kill ya the third time."

"That's the most unjust use of the Three Strikes law I've ever heard of," I said, opening my eyes.

Syd stuck his head into the stagecoach. "What's the hold-up, Jakey?"

"He been prayin' in here!" Polly said, and the way she said it made it sound like she had caught me masturbating .

"Ah, hell, Jakey!"

"He's tryin' to get everyone in his little cult, ain't he? Sacrificing good folk to his crazy gods, ain't he? Well, I'm too smart to ever get sold. I ain't belong in no prison cell, that's for damn sure."

Syd looked at me with fake anger. "Jakey, please stop foisting yer bizarre voodoo hooey on the poor, innocent folk of this Territory. I'm beggin,' for the last time.

"You know what?" I said. "I'm done. Done with the prayer. Polly, the stagecoach is yours."

I grabbed my things and stormed off the vessel, and was quickly followed by Syd. Stepping out into the bright day, I squinted down the dirt road we had just ridden in on. Nothing in sight except beautiful rolling hills covered in dry grass, with the occasional shrub or tree.

"Where's the house?" I asked Syd.

"Turn around, Jakey. That's Mareshead Mansion."

I turned to face the other direction, and let out an audible gasp. The stagecoach was parked in a dirt road loop, right up against a monstrous structure, four or five stories in height. It was remarkably beautiful in design, basically looking like the largest log cabin ever constructed. The front of the building was made mostly of treated whole logs, with some more traditional wooden planks, as well as some stone pillars. The roofs were beautifully gabled, and an immense wooden doorway stood up on top of a set of stone steps. Eight whole logs served as pillars for the huge roof that hung over the doorway, four on each side of the door. Around the house, the landscaping was simple but effective, displaying local trees and shrubs, further conveying the home's rustic look.

I thought I could hear an odd humming sound, possibly coming from the north of the house. I looked around, but couldn't detect what was causing the noise. I played with my ears, wondering if perhaps some of the close gunshots I had been around recently had done some damage to my hearing. I hoped not.

While Syd, Glaucia, and Lewis were being escorted towards the house by guards, I saw Big Horn standing off to the side, making a new portal opening.

"Well, my job's done here," he said as I approached. "Time to go back where I belong."

"You're not going inside with us?" I asked, disappointed.

"Oh no," he said. "The farther I stay away from Jericho the better my disposition remains. And I hate to be separated from my camp for this long, from the purpose my ancestors intended for me."

I wanted to beg him to stay. He was the only one I trusted here, and I knew from Rose I was walking into my certain death here. I didn't want to have to face that alone.

"I'd love it if you came along with us," was all I could manage to say. I didn't want to admit my growing fears to him.

He looked so very sad all of the sudden. He put his strong hand on my shoulder. "I wish I could, you know that. But I would be betraying everything I am, everything I've lived for. There's nothing I can do to change anything that happens in there. All that would occur is, I'd lose my patience with it in about five seconds. One brash comment, as truthful as it may be, would be the end of me in there. Jericho's been looking for a way to get rid of me for decades. The only way I've survived all this time is to strictly not get involved." He shook his head again. "I'm with you. In spirit. I'll chant to my ancestors for you, and they will not let you be afraid." He took off his hand. "Of course, don't let Sherriff Towerly know I said anything about chanting to my ancestors, or I would be quickly locked up. Ah, speak of the devil."

Sheriff Towerly approached us on horseback, followed by all of those men. "You still say you can deliver us back to Fools Gold, Indian?" he asked.

"I can. Just ride through the Portal."

I watched as all the men on horses rode through the Portal, back into Fools Gold. Big Horn looked at me in the eyes and waved to me solemnly before he too stepped through the portal, and disappeared completely. I felt a lonely lump in my throat, and forced it down into submission.

"I see you, trying to hide back here," said a vampire cowboy, clearly one of the guards here, who grabbed my arm and pulled me towards the house. "You need to come with me."

"I wasn't trying to hide," I said angrily, but that didn't stop him from keeping his hand on me as we rejoined Syd, Glaucia, and Lewis up on the steps of Mareshead Mansion.

We approached the massive double doors carved out of oak. "Wow, those doors are really big," Lewis said.

"If you think that's something, wait until you see the Great Room," Syd said.

"Where is that?" he asked.

"Trust me, you'll know it when you see it."

Lewis walked through the front doors slightly ahead of me, and as soon as he did, his jaw went slack and his neck craned up. "This is the Great Room, isn't is?"

I followed him through the front doors, and stepped into a massive hall, and I too almost went slack-jawed. It gave the impression of the world's largest, grandest hunting cabin. It was all made out of oak and cedar logs with the bark removed. Two huge wooden staircases snaked up on the left and right sides of this room. They led to balconies on the second, third, and fourth stories of the house that all looked down upon this main center hall of the Great Room.

The hard-wood floor contained a long wooden table underneath a giant, illuminated chandelier made of antlers. Clearly this was some sort of meeting table; a large group of green-eyed, attractive people in Western clothing sat with pens and papers. Around the sides of the room, doors led off to other parts of this house. Numerous lit, stone fireplaces heated up the room. The one glaring contradiction to the natural beauty of the room: to one side there was a large, human sized steel cage, which was empty. I wondered if that cage was meant for me. Human servants moved around the room, tending the vampires there. Vampire guards like the one that was holding my arm stood around looking imposing.

But none of those features in the room really seemed to matter, because this whole, enormous area was built and focused around the space in the back. It was there that four massive logs served as pillars, framing an upraised platform that held nothing but a massive, wooden chair. Though they may have referred to the man currently sitting in the chair as the Governor, his seat was nothing but one giant throne.

I had never been the best judge of character, I'll admit that much. It usually took me a good while before I could confidently sniff out people's true motivations. But with the Governor, I knew as soon as I laid eyes on him that he was absolutely evil. He completely chilled me to the bone. In front of me, I could see Lewis react similarly, clutching his mother's dress as soon as he saw Jericho sitting on his throne. The chair might have been huge, but he filled it out completely, tall and muscular, a very large stature. He was dressed like a cowboy, but his clothes were of the finest design, clearly extremely well-fashioned. He looked very much like the typical villainous cowboy in one of Syd's many old west films, dressed mostly in dark colors that seemed to fit his disposition.

Oddly, the man looked like a genetic copy of Syd, though their countenances were so thoroughly opposed. Syd was quick with a smile, and Jericho looked like he hadn't smiled in years. His rough scowl cut through everyone he looked down on. Their green eyes were built from the same genes, but where Syd's were flirty and charming; Jericho's were hard and icy cold. Syd was either clean shaven or stubbly, but Jericho had some very distinctive old west facial hair. He had what I thought was referred to as a La Souvarov: no beard to speak of, but sculpted sideburns that melded into his thick moustache. This was a severe style that certainly didn't lend him any amount of warmth. I knew all vampires looked about thirty, and Syd fit this description. But Jericho seemed years older. I realized that this had nothing to do with wrinkles on his face or graying hair, because there was no trace of those. No, this was just the aura Jericho gave off. There was no youthful innocence about the man sitting in that chair; he was a hardened, aged lion.

"Bring them in," he voice boomed, deep, chilling. His voice too sounded genetically identical to Syd's, though the personality in it was entirely dissimilar. His eyes glanced over us with a cruel countenance. "Where is Rose?" he asked.

"She's in the infirmary in Fools Gold," said Syd. "She's was shot in the chest, but she's going to be fine."

"Where is Tucker?" he asked.

"Passed out, drunk, in the back of the stagecoach," Syd said.

I heard what sounded like a child laughing. It wasn't Lewis, it was coming from somewhere else in the room, though I couldn't see any other children here.

"I want him carried in," Jericho said. "He may be at death's door, but he served many years on this very Cabinet, and was one of my most trusted advisors. Treat him like royalty, and give him the best guest room."

"Sir, do you mean in the Cabinets' houses?" asked one of the guards. "Or the servants' houses?"

"I mean this house," he said. "I want to send him out of this world with a little bit of flair."

It was a very kind gesture. I wondered if perhaps my previous assessment of the man had been wrong.

His cold eyes then looked at Glaucia and Lewis. "Wife, how good of you to finally return," he said with cool disregard. "Your apartment on the top floor has been vacant all these years, waiting for you. You're dismissed, feel free to start precisely where you left off, hermitting yourself up there."

Again, I heard that childish laughter coming from somewhere.

Glaucia nodded meekly, took Lewis's hand, and started to make her way quickly towards the stairs.

"Wait," Jericho commanded. "The boy stays here."

"But sir, the ride tired him out," she protested.

"He stays," Jericho said. "He's my heir, and this is my Cabinet meeting. It will be a valuable learning experience for him."

Lewis looked at his mother nervously. Clearly he was intimidated by Jericho and all these people. "Alright, I'll stay here and watch," Glaucia said.

"No, not you," Jericho said. "A Cabinet meeting is no place for a wife, especially not for one as feeble minded as you. I made the mistake of letting a woman raise my first two sons without my guidance. This is my rectification. Drop the boy's hand, and leave, now."

"Mommy, don't leave me," Lewis protested, burying his nervous face in his mother's dress.

"I have to," she said. "Just for a little while, and then we'll be together again, okay?" She let go of her son and forced a smile for his sake, though you could see on the inside, she was torn up.

The guards pulled Lewis away, and she started to climb the stairs.

"It's okay, little bro," Syd said, smiling his warm, charming smile. "I'm here with ya."

Lewis grabbed Syd's hand, and seemed somewhat reassured.

"No, you are not here for him," Jericho said. "Lewis, I want you to come here, by my side. Syd can stay where he is."

At first, Lewis did nothing but freeze in terror at being addressed by this man.

"Lewis, come, now!" Jericho's voice boomed.

Lewis was startled by the noise. He let go of Syd and walked obediently towards Jericho.

When he reached the man, Jericho looked down on him. "I'm going to give you an order, and it's very important that you listen. You are absolutely not permitted to associate with that imposter over there." He pointed at Syd. "I know that you're thinking he must have stolen my genes at gunpoint. Truth is, out of my three children with my first wife, one was a girl, but my seed is so fuckin' virile. Not only did I always get the woman pregnant on the first unprotected screw, I made boys two out of three times. And my seed was so potent, it kicked out any of my wife's genes with my sons, makin' duplicates of me. And that's the same seed that made you, Lewis, so I wouldn't be surprised if you end up taking mostly after yer father. But even though Syd looks just like me, he ain't me. Sure, he may be the next in line. But he is not and never has been my son. I will not allow his stink to infect you. So, you have to promise me. You will ignore him like he's not there. He is nothing but a ghost to you."

"I promise," said a frightened Lewis.

"I promise, Father," Jericho corrected.

"I promise, Father."

"Oooo, my reunions with you, dear father, are always overflowing with your sweet sentiment, but this time you may have outdone yourself." It was amazing that Syd could say something sarcastic like that and still come off light and charming. His quips were always delivered with a pleasant smile. "I guess after coming home to discover my favorite new truck had been blown up because you wanted to celebrate the 4th by having special fireworks, or when you were so happy to be reunited with me, you celebrated by fucking and eating my favor rite girl. I guess a simple tongue-lashing just seems warm and fuzzy by comparison."

"You're excused as well, Syd," Jericho said.

"What, no thank you for a job well done? Delivering this one was no piece of apple pie," he pointed at me.

"You're excused, Syd," he said again, more sternly this time.

"Fine, I really couldn't think of anything more dullsville than hanging around this Cabinet meeting anyway," he said, making his way up the stairs. "When I take over as Governor it will be the first thing to go."

"A Governor cannot dissolve the Cabinet body," said a white vampire seated at the table. He was the only one dressed in what looked like a suit from the early 1800's, he was leaner than most, and he was wearing an unattractive Hulihee (a thin moustache connected to long-haired friendly-mutton chops). "That's pursuant to written clause 106 in the Logan Clause Codebook," he said dryly.

"Thank you, Cornelius," Jericho said, more dismissive than grateful.

I heard that childlike laughter again, then finally identified the source. Even though the laughter certainly sounded high pitched and child-like, it was coming from a woman Cabinet member, who I figured to be a vampire because she had green eyes, sitting at the table. She was small in stature, and my first impression was that she was a pre-teen, short and all bones. Then I got a better look and realized she was one of those adults who people mistake for teenagers because they look like puberty never visited them. They were usually the kinds of people pedophiles legally pursued. She stuck out amongst the cowboys and the simple dressed ladies of the Cabinet by wearing a totally ridiculous, bright pink dress that looked like Glenda the Good Witch via Moulin Rouge. Other women here wore either very little make-up or none at all, but she had make-up all over her face, white powder, tons of eye shadow, bright red lipstick, you name it. All of this, combined with her very curly blonde hair being done up in a wild fashion, made me think of either a young teenager who puts on her mother's things in order to look older, or someone who knows her outfit is ridiculous and is just wearing it to be ironic and clownish, but underneath all that, I could see she was extremely beautiful. The other Cabinet members were stiff and dour, more in line with Rose, but this vampire was all smiles, enthusiastic claps, and infectious laughter.

"Somebody get Lewis a chair!" Jericho ordered. "I want him to sit here, beside me."

Like lightening, one of the human servants brought a nice chair and put it on the dais Lewis's throne was on, and Lewis sat down, the poor boy shaking with fear.

"Bring the One to me!" Jericho ordered, and immediately the vampire guard started to push me towards the dais.

"I can walk just fine, thank you," I said, walking up to the back of the room, where Jericho looked down on all his subjects from his throne.

When I got close, Jericho sniffed the air. "Ah, that's AB Negative," he said. "Lewis, can you smell that?"

Lewis smelled the air as well. "Yes, Father."

"It's wonderful," Jericho said. "I hereby sentence this man to death."

I felt afraid suddenly, but tried to keep it inside.

"Are you sure you want to do that, Mr. Governor?" asked Cornelius, the well-dressed vampire in the Cabinet who had quoted legal codes to Syd before.

"Absolutely," Jericho said.

"What crimes have I committed? I've done nothing but go along with your people's wishes."

Jericho ignored me completely. He hadn't even looked me in the eyes since I got here. I knew he wasn't the least bit intimidated by me, that was for sure. By not looking at me or addressing me, he was objectifying me, making me less than a person.

"How should the sentence be carried out, sir?" asked one of the guards.

"I'll do it myself, right here," Jericho said.

I looked out at the Cabinet members, at the other guards. "I'm an innocent person, being killed pointlessly," I yelled. "Will all of you sit by idly and just let this man kill me unjustly? Just because he is some sort of king?"

"Guards, silence the prisoner," Jericho said calmly

"Well, don't you know that in my world, all kings have either laid down their power or been overthrown? The people rule themselves, as it should be!"

The guards forced a cloth into my mouth and gagged me with it, tying it around my head. I tried to pull it off, but they pulled my arms behind my back.

"Bring the prisoner to me," Jericho said.

I kicked with my legs, but they picked me up and carried me to Jericho's chair. I thrashed my body around angrily.

"His anger is wonderful, isn't it, Lewis?" Jericho remarked. "I usually like to play with my food, but I've already had my fun today, so I'll do this one quickly. Hold him still."

They laid me down on Jericho's lap. They put me on my side, with my left side of my throat exposed.

"I waited so long to taste this one," he said to Lewis.

I tried to brace myself for my impending death. I tried so hard to be strong, but my eyes were misting up suddenly, as a mixture of sadness and anger took over me violently. That wasn't how I wanted to go out.

I saw Jericho's fangs extend, then his face move down towards my neck. I gave one last ditch effort to fight, but did no damage to either Jericho or the guards. I felt that familiar pinprick in my neck, followed by that odd euphoria, and felt my dick go hard. While I fought the numbing complacency his bite was putting into me, almost asking me to die willingly, Jericho sucked away ravenously.

Jericho pulled up off of me again, his teeth bloody. "Syd was right. The taste is magnificent." He rubbed his finger on my wound, and then turned towards Lewis. "Lewis, try this," he said.

The little boy's fangs came out, and he licked up the blood from the finger. His face lit up excitedly right away. Clearly he was blown away by this flavor.

"It's almost like, liquid electricity, isn't it?" Jericho asked.

"Mmm-hmm."

"Do you want more, Lewis?"

"Yes, please," he said.

By this time, the euphoria had worn off, and the pain of two huge holes in my neck kicked in violently, but there was nothing I could do.

"Help me finish him off, then." Jericho grabbed Lewis's little head and pushed his face down towards my neck. I could see those little fangs grow larger than ever as the boy moved in to feed.

Then he shut his mouth suddenly, regaining his control, and shaking his head. "But Mama always tells me I shouldn't kill when I drink," the boy said, clearly feeling sorry for me.

"Your mother is a raving fool," Jericho said. "No matter, I'll gladly finish him off myself."

Jericho closed his mouth over my wound again, and I was at least thankful the pain went away. He sucked away the blood quickly, and I could feel the life draining from me.

"Stop! Don't kill him!"

I felt Jericho's head pull off me again. Everyone in the room looked up, and I followed their gazes. Syd had reappeared on the third floor balcony, and was looking down at us.

"I don't permit you to kill him," Syd yelled down, and I was rather shocked that he was bothering to interfere.

"He has no authority to make that demand," Cornelius said with his droll, bored voice. Syd must have known he was just making an empty gesture, probably just to screw with his father.

"I didn't think so," Jericho said, and he lowered his fangs back towards my neck.

"I have a valid basis for the demand!" Syd said.

"Well, let's hear it, my boy," Cornelius said.

"You can't kill him, because..."

Syd paused, clearly searching his limited mind for some sort of valid excuse. Clearly he hadn't thought ahead about this, just like everything else he did in life. I sighed, letting go of any hope that this ploy of his could possibly work.

"Because what?" Jericho asked, exasperated.

"Because..."

"Because shit," Jericho said. "I'm killing him now."

He bit back into my neck.

"Because we're gettin' hitched!"

There were gasps from the people in the room, and even some jaws dropped, my own included.

"You're marrying this human?" Cornelius asked.

"Yes, we're engaged to be married."

"That shouldn't matter," Jericho said. "I'm the Governor, I have the right to execute who I want."

"In all my years as the Cabinet Leader, I've never come across this occurrence," Cornelius said. "One slight respite while I consult the Logan Clause Casebook." He began frantically flipping through the book.

Meanwhile, I was sitting there, bleeding. Luckily my wounds were pointed upwards, so the bleeding wasn't as bad as it could be, but it was highly disturbing to me nonetheless. If I hadn't been lying down, surely I would be fainting.

"You've never come across this because it's total horseshit," Jericho said to Cornelius.

"Ah, here's the section on marriages, let me review it," Cornelius said. "Syd is correct."

There were more gasps in the crowd, and I couldn't believe my ears. Was I going to somehow escape death today?

"See? I knew it!" Syd said, though I could clearly see he was as shocked as anyone that this had worked.

"Ludicrous!" Jericho yelled. "I wanna hear the details, Cornelius. Verbatim."

"The Governor shall not control who or when his family members marry. Once engagement is announced, the Governor shall not knowingly sabotage, kill, or hurt in any way the fiancé of the family member without the express, non-coerced consent of both the family member and the fiancé. The family member and their fiancé must marry within a month of the engagement announcement in order for this protection to hold."

"And what if the engagement is a fake?" Jericho asked.

"If the Governor can prove the engagement is a sham, or if the marriage is more about convenience rather than true affection, the engagement becomes null, and this agreement terminates effective immediately. Once the marriage takes place, this contract becomes bound to the marriage contract, and only termination of the marriage will nullify these protective terms."

"Syd, stop playing your childish games here," Jericho said. "And admit to everyone now that this engagement is nothing but tomfoolery."

"Nope, I swear it's the truth," Syd said. "Jake and I are deeply in love."

"Is this true, Jake?" Cornelius asked.

I was the worst liar, and I hated lying, but my life depended on this. "Yes, it is."

"He's lying," Jericho said.

"You need proof, Mr. Governor," Cornelius said.

"I'll get proof, and when I do, I'll kill this lying piece of shit, and there's no way I'm gonna be gentle like I was today. No, I'm really gonna enjoy myself."

He shoved me off his lap, and I rolled painfully onto the steps of the dais. In a matter of moments, Syd was upon me, licking my wound clean and healed.

"Until I find a way to burn this rat out of our nest," Jericho said, rubbing his moustache and sideburn whiskers with his hand just like a villain twirling his moustache, "I'll occupy my time by goin' straight to his home and killin' his family. Cornelius, I didn't hear anything in yer little laws preventing me from doing that."

"No, I don't see anything concerning the family of the fiancé, Mr. Governor."

My heart sank, and I knew I'd make Syd give me my phone so I could call and warn my mother and brother.

"Also, this of course means that the two of you will have to enter the couples rodeo contest," he said with a smile.

"Of course," Syd said.

"I'd like to see that modern boy not make a total bastard of himself the moment he gets out in the Rodeo Corral. Clearly, the only thing his worthless ass has ever ridden is dick."

"Not only will we enter the tournament, Jericho, we'll unseat you and yer wife as champions," Syd said. "Guarantee it. In fact, if you think you're so talented, how `bout me make a little side wager?"

"What are the terms?" he asked.

"If we beat you in the tournament, you have to swear that no member of the entire Logan Blood will ever interfere in any way with Jakey's family or human friends. They'll be totally safe. In fact, I want you to throw out every piece of information you have about them, and never share it with anyone. And those restrictions will still apply from now until we face you in the Rodeo Corral."

"Fine," Jericho said, "but when I win, I want my prize to be this: one night with your bride to be, for me to do what I please with. Before the wedding, of course. I wouldn't want to soil his precious vows. I'd love to do my dear son a favor and break in his bride for him. Smooth out any rough edges the boy may have before the wedding night comes."

I cringed, but didn't say anything because I knew my family's life was on the line.

"After the one night, he'd better come back to me in one piece," Syd said. "It'll just ruin all of our wedding photos if he's missing a head or something, and I can't have that. You know how superficial I am."

"Oh, he'll be physically unharmed. I can't make guarantees about what kind of emotional changes our lovely night will make on him, though," he said, smiling wide. I could see his fangs were out again, turned on by just the thought of this possible reward with me. I shuddered. "You ain't scared that a night with a stud like me will spoil him forever for you, are ya? That he'll never have any use for you after that?"

"I'm scared that he'll come back more emotionally damaged than if he had just gone through the Nazi holocaust."

"Well, we all take our chances, ain't we?" he said.

"We agree to those terms," Syd said.

"But you can't just waltz right in here and demand to face off against the current rodeo champions. You have to work yer way up through the normal tournament bracket. Which means you got to beat two other semi-champions first `fore we even step into the Corral with you. If ya lose to either of them, you lose our bet."

"Yes, yes, no need to state the obvious."

"Cornelius, I want you to make this a formal contract," Jericho said.

"I'm already doing that as we speak," Cornelius said, writing quickly with a feathered pen on paper. "I'm including all the terms you just spoke of. I'm officially writing it as an agreement between Mr. Groves and the Governor, because Syd's involvement in it is really incidental. Given that, I'll need both of your signatures."

I was still on the ground recovering from the blood draining, so Cornelius brought over the contract and gave it to me. I read it all over carefully, making sure nothing had been omitted, and then I signed my name on the line. The contract was given to Jericho, and he did the same.

"Well, that settles it then," Cornelius said.

One of the servants asked, "Where should we put Mr. Grove's bags?"

"Put them in my room," Syd answered. "He doesn't need his own room. Ah, the elephant in the room, huh? No, we ain't exactly saving sex for marriage. We already have the healthy sex life of a pair of rabbits on their honeymoon. Right darlin?'"

My face burned with a mixture of anger and embarrassment at Syd, but to deny these claims would mean certain death. "Right," I said.

Syd reached in to give me a loving kiss on the mouth, but I turned my head and let him kiss me on the cheek. I did not want his lips touching mine.

"Syd, can I talk to you alone, please?" I asked, trying to sound pleasant.

"Sure, sweetie, let me show you your new home."

I stood up, wanting more than anything to put as much distance as I could between me and Jericho, but the blood-loss obviously got to me, because I fell over, fainting. It was totally embarrassing.

"Whoa!" Syd said, and used his vampire quick reflexes to catch me in his arms.

"Real dizzy," I whispered to him.

Syd lifted me up so he was carrying me against his chest, with both arms underneath me. "How sweet! The little dear insisted on being carried by me into our new apartment, like a bride being carried across the threshold. He wants to go straight up to our marriage bed and be deflowered. Ravenously and repeatedly. His words, not mine."

I was so angry. "That's not--"

My proud contradictions to the room were muffled when Syd pushed my face into his chest. He carried me up two flights of stairs, then through a wooden door into the hall. Even the hallway had servants milling about. Finally, we reached the door of his bedroom, which he kicked open, and he carried me through.

His bedroom was designed out of beautifully positioned, stained cedar planks, and was quite large. All the furniture had an antique, 1800's look to them. There was a king-sized historic-looking bed, an old- style bureau and wooden desk, and a plush settee for sitting that was placed by the large windows offering wonderful views. A corner of the room was devoted to his guitars, there was one of those antler- chandeliers above the bed, and there was even a free-standing four-claw bathtub, which was totally something I could see Syd putting in personally. An open door led to a walk-in closet that had a small fridge stowed in it. A second door led to a small bathroom.

I looked up and noticed that he had eight huge sky-light ceiling windows, making his ceiling more made of glass than it was wood. It currently bathed the whole room in twilight. "Beautiful skylights."

"They bug the hell outta me, but Jericho insists I sleep here."

Syd carelessly tossed me onto his bed.

"Thanks for the gentle touch there, Syd," I said.

"Well, I know how much you like it rough. Here I thought you might start being nice to me again. You know, after I single-handedly saved your life, you remember that one?"

"You know I'm not good at hiding my true feelings," I said to him.

"Well, you'd better learn how real fast, kiddo. Or end up dead. Your acting back there was practically razzie worthy."

I had no idea what a razzie was, and I didn't care. "Hey, I was trying," I said.

"You had all the lovability of a dead skunk lit on fire, somethin' I got plenty of experience with," he said. "Next time, don't freeze up when I touch you, don't turn away when I try to kiss you, and don't disagree with anything I say about our love life."

"Syd, I'm sorry. I do owe you a big thanks for saving my life. That may have been the first non- selfish thing I've seen from you."

"Well, don't die of shock just yet, Jakey," he said. "In the real world, acts of kindness all come with a price."

"What do you mean, Syd?" I asked, raising my eyebrow. "Why exactly did you have a change of heart back there about me dying, anyway?"

He shrugged. "I just saw Jericho drinkin' yer sweet blood down, not even savoring it. It all seemed so wasteful."

"This all has to do with your father, doesn't it?" I accused. "You wanted to take away what he wanted?"

"There's always been a competition between me and him. To see who has the biggest balls. But that's really the least of it. No, I just thought, well, hell. Jakey's blood regenerates if you don't take too much, and so he represents years of the best feedings ever. Jericho would throw all of that pleasure away in one feeding. Seems totally wrong. Plus, yer a cute guy, and instead of getting screwed silly, like you should be, he was just going to turn your pretty body to dust."

"I should have known you didn't save me because you were being noble, or because you had genuine, non-sexual feelings towards me."

He smiled. "You know I'm not built that way, Jakey," he said.

"So, what exactly are your terms?" I asked. "Clearly you don't really intend to marry me."

"Well, I bought you a month long extension of your life," he said. "Hopefully in that time, you can figure out some other way to keep yourself alive. I'm willing to play the public role of lovin' husband to be until then. There ain't nothing to risk for me except embarrassment, which I could care less about. On the other hand, if they find out the truth about us, you'll lose your life for it, and ya won't be able to save yer family. So, you know what's at stake for you. That means both of us have to be damn convincing. None of that phony shit you pulled just then anymore."

"And what are you expecting to get in return?" I asked.

His smile twisted suggestively. "I want some of the sugar we'll be telling people you're giving me," he said. "I want your body, and I want your blood."

"Absolutely not," I said. "Why does everyone here treat me like a whore? My body is not something that can be bought or bargained with."

"Aww, that's so cute. What quaint, romantic notions you have there. But time to get serious, Jakey. You need to make a choice. You heard Jericho, the next time he tries to kill you, he'll make it all kinds of awful. Or, you can avoid all of it by just letting me have all the rolls in the hay with you that I want."

"You're just as evil of a bastard as you ever were, you know that? No, I take that back. Somehow, you have descended into new lows of evil–bastardness now."

"Flattery will get you nowhere, Jakey."

There was a knock on Syd's door. "Mr. Logan, we've come to deliver Mr. Groves' things."

Syd looked at me. "Time to make up your mind. Should I open this door right now and tell them that the engagement is off?" He started to walk towards the door. "I have something I need to tell y'all."

"Wait! No, don't Syd, I agree, but only on these two terms. First, you will not be topping me.

"Oh, come on. Your ass wants nothin' in this world if not for my fine cock to sex the hell out of it. And I'd really be doing you a favor, if you ask me."

"I'm not even going to ask you to expand on that one."

"Well, I'm gonna anyway. Your hole is a virgin, and let me tell ya, hot guys like me won't have anything to do with a virgin like you."

"Luckily, guys like you are the last people on earth I would ever want to attract."

"Too funny, Jakey. No, let me continue. If any top or straight guy ever agrees to fuck a virgin, they must got something wrong with `em. Probably a dick the size of an earthworm, and the guy is so ashamed he is hoping she's never seen another dick so she doesn't know the difference. Or if that's not the problem, probably the guy just plain sucks in bed, like I heard my brother is all pathetically sentimental when he fucks. A normal guy would never fuck a virgin. Why? Because they just lie there letting us do all the work, it's like fucking a corpse. Only a corpse that sobs and cries sometimes. But you, Jakey, I'm so fond of you that I'm willing to be the one to end your virginity so that you would be more of a hot commodity for all those other hot guys after."

"Nope, you are not topping me as a part of this. If you can't agree to that then might as well kill me now."

"Fine. What's your second condition?

"You can only use my body and blood once every two weeks."

He shook his head. "At least once a week."

"Fine. Once a week."

"And if ya ain't gonna be letting me have the best part of you, which, in case I am bein' too indirect for you, I am talking about yer asshole. That means you gotta do whatever else I want. Most importantly, I don't want you to shut your eyes and just lie there, praying for it to end. I want you to want my body, and I want you turned on, and I want you to cum. I want you to behave like you did before you found out I was a vampire, back when you were just dripping with desire for me."

I sighed. "Fine, but just once a week, Syd."

"Deal, Jakey."

"What is it you wanted to tell us, Mr. Logan?" they yelled through the door.

Syd ran over to his bed and jumped on top of me. He roughly started to kiss me and wildly started to hump me, even though we were both fully clothed. It was so strange, I didn't know how to react.

"Yes, that's it, take it!" he hooted. "Oh, sorry! What I wanted to say is that we're in the throes of lovemaking here! Please leave his stuff outside the door."

"Alright!"

"Knowin' how nosy these folks are," Syd whispered to me, "They are for sure at the door, listening. We have to make this as realistic as possible here. Yeah, take it all, lover-boy!" Syd yelled. "Yer gonna hafta sell this too, Jakey!" Syd whispered.

"Oh, alright," I whispered. "Yeah Syd!" I said loudly.

"Really, is that the best you can do?" he asked. "No lover of mine that I've ever had in here has reacted with such pitiful signs of passion, they'll see right through that."

"Oh yeah, Syd!" I yelled. "Ride me like a cowboy, you sex god!"

"That's better," he whispered, then he yelled: "You'll be sore tonight!" as he bounced the two of us on the bed.

There was a knock at the door.

"We're still fuckin' like rabbits in here!" Syd yelled.

"Oh, okay brother, I'll come back in a few minutes. Er, I mean a few hours, knowing you."

"Parker?" Syd asked, his face brightening.

"Yes."

"Oh, no, we were just, uh, finishing up there. Come in."

"Uh, I'll wait until you're decent," he said.

"You should know by now that I'll never be a decent man, bro, but how bout you wait till we're dressed?"

Syd and I pretended to put out clothes back on. I got up off the bed, feeling much better than I did a few minutes ago.

Syd opened the door. Standing in the doorway was a deliriously handsome man holding my bags in his arms. So, this was the vampire Della was so enamored with, the one she told me to befriend. "Are these yours?" he asked me, his beautiful eyes looking into mine, and I felt a spark of something magical between us.

"You shouldn't be carryin' those," Syd said, grabbing the bags and throwing them haphazardly towards the closet. "C'mere and give yer big bro a hug!"

The two of them embraced and slapped each other's backs; Syd's slap being much hardier than his brother's gentle one.

"I missed you, Syd," he said warmly. "Seems like you've been spending more and more time on the outside these days."

"Sure as hell beats this place," Syd said.

He turned to me and smiled, and I felt my knees go weak. "You must be Jake," he said. "I'm Parker Logan."

I extended my hand. "Hi there," was all my suddenly tongue tied self could stammer.

"I'd be remiss if I didn't give my future brother-in-law a hug," Parker said, and he reached in for a tight squeeze. Goodness, even though his embrace was gentle and light, I could feel how dizzyingly strong those hefty muscles were, and I had to concentrate on not being swept off my feet. What made the moment even batter was that he smelled like heaven, a mix of soap, lotion, and aftershave. When he finally let go of me, I got the urge to grab on and never let go. He turned to Syd and said, "The servants told me you brought your new fiancé, but they didn't tell me what a handsome man he was. Syd, you are one lucky dog."

I smiled, embarrassed.

"That I am," Syd said, putting his arm around me. "Of course, Jake feels just as lucky to have me, dontcha, pumpkin?"

"Sure I do," I lied, annoyed that Syd always had to make everything about him.

Parker smiled, and I looked him over. Wow, he looked so much like Syd, I would have thought they were identical twins. How bizarre that the three Logan men looked like genetic copies of each other. Same height, same build, same green eyes and tan skin. Parker had slightly blonder hair than Syd. Syd didn't have any facial hair per say, but he did sport an ample degree of stubble, being too lazy to shave as frequently as the rest of us. Parker, in contrast, was very well manicured, including being freshly shaved.

Then all the other differences hit me. Parker wore a fancy Victorian period suit with a grey vest and a black tie, more like Cornelius's outfit, when all the other men dressed down. But unlike Cornelius's bolo tie, Parker had on an old-fashioned, western sort of long, loose bowtie, whose ends hung down a few inches over his chest. He also had a gilded chain connecting one pocket of the vest to the other, and he had on clean, nice shoes. He wore a hat that looked cowboy in style but was fancier and meant to accompany a suit. I noticed he removed his hat when he came in the room politely, even though the hallway technically was just as much indoors as the apartment. His hair, almost the same shade as Syd's, was a bit longer than his brothers. While Syd's was always messy, Parker's hair was neatly cut in an elegant Victorian style that one wouldn't find in modern society.

His smile was more reserved; in fact, his whole demeanor was much less manic and excited, a lot more relaxed and controlled. His face was so much friendlier than Syd's, in a gentle way. I could hear the Texas in his voice, but he didn't use any of the incorrect cowboy grammar that Syd used that drove me off the wall.

There was something about the way he was smiling at me that made me weak in the knees. I'd never seen a smile as warm as his was, both on his gorgeous lips and in his sweet eyes. Unlike Syd's huge toothy grins, his smile was much more reserved and closed-mouth, yet somehow connected with his amazing eyes to absolutely melt my soul. There was so much warmth in that smile, I felt like I'd freeze to death when he inevitably left me alone. I'd seen plenty of attractive men before, but seeing Parker's honest smile directed at me made me feel so safe and loved. I knew deep in my soul that this man would do me no harm, that he was a truly good soul. I had never believed in love at first sight before, but if Parker had asked me to marry him right then, I probably would have said yes.

Suddenly, Parker started to sniff the air curiously. His gaze settled on the still-wet blood that was splattered on the skin around my neck. He seemed surprised and dismayed by this discovery, and he covered his smile up with his hands, clearly embarrassed to show me his fangs popping out, as if worried that I might be scared of the sight.

"Blood, he's got blood on him," Parker said.

"Sorry, Parker. Jakey, how `bout cleanin' up a bit, baby?" Syd said. "Parker here's a little more sensitive to blood than most."

"Sure, I'll go into the bathroom," I said.

I walked over to Syd's bathroom and shut the door. There wasn't a shower in there, so I started cleaning off in the sink.

"That's better," Parker said. I could hear his voice through the bathroom door.

"His blood smells unbelievable, ain't it?" Syd asked.

"Well, he's an AB Negative," Parker was saying. "Clearly I know what you found so appealing in him. It doesn't hurt that he's a handsome man too."

"If you think his blood smells good, you should taste it," Syd bragged.

"You know I'm not interested in Jake's blood."

"But Park, you can taste he's AB Negative, which, yer damned right, is spectacular. But then because he's got that special gene? His blood, it's like it's lit up with magic."

"Okay, so it's clear that you're, you know, very attracted to him."

"I think the term you are lookin' for is, I've got a raging boner for him."

"Not precisely how I was going to word it, but yes," Parker said. "That's all well and fine. But you need more than physical attraction to sustain a marriage, Syd."

"Aw shit, no kidding?" Syd asked, surprised and upset I heard him laugh. "Just fuckin' with ya, Parker. Hey, look. It's not just lust, I'm in love with this guy." I could hear that trademark charm in his voice that I now associated with a lie.

"Really Syd? I never figured you'd be capable of a love like that," Parker said.

"Well, neither did I," Syd said, wanting to end this conversation, clearly.

"If you truly love him, his good looks and pleasurable blood should be irrelevant, because all that should matter to you is who he is inside. That's what love means to me, how Della always told us it should be. Is that really what you feel for him?"

"I couldn't have described my feelings better myself, Park," he said.

"Isn't this dangerous for Jake, Syd?" Parker asked.

"Jake is more mature than he looks," Syd said. "He can handle the danger."

Parker sighed. "Look, I'm only saying this because I love you. I just think you're rushing into this without really thinking things through. It's not the first time you've made that mistake."

I had finished cleaning up the blood, so I decided to rescue Syd from this conversation before he'd have to weave any more lies, not that he had would ever have any qualms about that. "Well, I'm all cleaned up," I said as I left the bathroom, wanting to make sure they would know to end their sidebar discussion.

"You know, there's a little saloon in this house?" Parker said to me. "Why don't we go down and I'll buy you two a beer. Jake, I'd love to get to know you better."

It sounded good to me, but Syd cut in quickly. "Sorry, bro, we're in the middle of uh, you know..." His voice trailed off, clearly not able to think of any good excuse.

"What?" asked Parker.

"Uh, you know...sexin.'" Of course that would be the first excuse that Syd would be able to pull out of his mind.

"I thought you just finished that?" Parker asked.

"Well, we're overdue for another round," Syd said. "We're crazy like that. Right, sweetums?" Syd elbowed me.

"Uh, right," I said, embarrassed beyond belief in front of this man who I so wanted to impress.

"Well, how about tomorrow?" Parker asked. "Jake, we could get out of the house, do something fun, and get to know each other a bit more intimately."

"Jake doesn't have time for that kind of thing, Parker," Syd said. "He's majorly busy."

"With what?" Parker asked, not annoyed but just curious. "And please don't tell me with all the lovemaking you are having. You need to save some of it for the honeymoon, after all."

"Well, there's the sex, and..." Syd started to stumble, thinking hard, "and this wedding. He has a whole plan. Wants to go the whole nine yards. Invite hundreds. He has every little detail planned out in his head. He is the regular Bridezilla over here, and he really has no time for any other engagements."

Parker smiled. "Oh, I see. Well, I wouldn't want to keep you away from these important details with a wedding date looming so amazingly close. There's always time after the wedding to get acquainted." He was very polite, trying to hide the slight disappointment in his voice. I found his vulnerability endearing; so opposite of his brother.

"Syd, I think I can manage to take a break in all of this planning to hang with Parker."

"Are you sure, sweatpea?" Syd said, politeness masking some irritation.

"Positive."

"But there's also all the preparation we'll have to do for the couples rodeo tournament."

"Oh, that's right," Parker said. "Jake, you probably don't know this, but when a Logan Blood fanged vampire and non-fanged vampire announce a marriage, especially if one of them comes from one of the old Logan families, it's expected that if both parties are physically competent, they enter in a special couples component of the rodeo activities we do in the Territory. It's a chance for the new couple to show everyone else just how well they work together."

"And to show off who has the best rodeo skills to the public," Syd said. "Look, we just made a special bet with Jericho that we'll be able to unseat him as champion in the couples' tournament."

Parker looked surprised. "That'll be a tough order, to be sure. Jericho's amazingly competent when it comes to rodeo. I hope you didn't wager a whole lot of money over it."

"We didn't," Syd said, and he was going to leave it at that.

"That's because Syd wagered my family's safety if we win, and me forced to spend a night with Jericho if he loses," I said, too annoyed at it all to mislead Parker.

"Syd, you didn't!" Parker said. "How could you wager your own fiancé like that?"

Syd shrugged. "It won't matter, `cause we'll be winning. You just watch. I don't care how much practice it takes, I'm not a loser and I never have been."

"Well, I've got a lot of experience picked up during all my rodeo days," Parker said. "I'd be happy to help in any way I can. Just let me know."

"I'm just as knowledgeable," Syd said. "I can teach him just fine."

"Whatever you prefer," Parker said.

"Even with all that to work on, I still think I'll have time to hang out with Parker tomorrow," I said.

"Alright then, what should the three of us do tomorrow?" Syd asked, switching gears, suddenly sounding like he was really looking forward to the time with Parker.

"Syd, how about Parker and I just go out on our own? It would be nice to have some time just to ourselves."

Syd clearly didn't like that idea.

"Well, if that's what you'd prefer," Parker said. "But only we get the go ahead from Syd."

"Alright, why should I care?" Syd asked.

"I'll see you tomorrow then, Jake," Parker said.

"Great, it's a date then," I replied with a smile.

Syd smiled and waved to his brother, and he turned and walked back towards the door. As he left, I noticed he was walking with a slight limp, and I wondered if he had recently hurt his leg somehow.

After Parker had left, Syd turned and gave me a look. "Great, it's a date then," he said, mocking me with a falsetto, girly voice.

"I do NOT sound like that!"

"You sound like a love-struck fourteen year old princess, darlin.' I was trying to save you from having to be around him," Syd said.

"Why would you have to save me from that?" I asked.

"Because I know how much you hate lying, and he's not as thick as most of the people around here. He's smart, and he's sensitive. He'll see right through your lies, Jake. Yer just not believable enough for him."

"Oh, I'll be okay."

Syd shrugged. "Fine by me, Jakey," he said. "Like I told ya, I don't got any stake in this lie. All the stakes are on you. You make yer own blunders, then."

"Thanks, Syd. I will."

"'Course, it's damn clear to anything with eyes that you plain want to fuck him."

"What?!" I asked, incredulous. I may have found him to be a handsome gentleman, but I certainly wasn't ready to jump into bed with him. "I do not!"

"Oh, come on Jake, you never smile like that at someone that you feel strictly platonic about. And the `it's a date,' line? You were just about to open his fly and blow him."

"Syd, you are being totally ridiculous. If you think that the only reason I would smile or be friendly to someone is because I want to have sex with them, well, I think you're confusing me with you."

He laughed. "Hey, I don't give a fuck who you fuck, Jakey. We're not really getting married, so have a blast. But if you let him give your ass a good screwin' after refusing to do the same for me,' I will be so pissed."

"You're nuts."

"On second thought, I will only be pissed if you don't give me the same sort of lovin.'"

"Parker and I are not having sex," I said. "Though, like you said, if we did, it would be my business, not yours." I felt a sickening sense of familiarity hit me. "I feel like I've seen Parker's smile before. Syd, please tell me why."

"It's because I learned how to mimic his sappy, `I sure do care for you' smile before I was sent in the first time to infiltrate your father and your family. Practiced for hours in the mirror before I could get it down, that shit sure ain't come natural to me, let me tell ya. How does it look?" He did that warm smile, and it was an awful imitation of his brother. Only, now that I knew how fake his version was, I could see right through it.

"You are such a jerk. You knew that was the smile that I thought meant you cared about me all these years!"

"Which was total crap, I never cared in that way about you or your family. And there's another expression I had to nail that always came from Parker naturally. The, `I give a major fuck about your pain and so want to help you' frown." He switched to that his very fake look of concern. "Yup, I had to use that one every time you went on and on about your typical teenage trivial problems."

"You mean when I would confide in you my feelings over having my genetic mother dying before I ever met her, about my father racially discriminating against me as a kid, and about us being too poor to afford anything? Is that really what you're identifying as trivial teenage problems?"

"Yup, that's right. I knew I had to pretend to comfort you and listen when all I wanted to do was tell you to grow a pair and get the fuck over it."

"That's so sweet of you, Syd. I'm so lucky to have such a swell fellow stumble into my life."

"Damn straight! Of course, once I realized what a good potential fuck you could be back in Tahoe, that's when I first started to see you in a whole other rosy light."

"Your deeply romantic feelings towards me get me every time. Hey, why was Parker limping, do you know?"

"Oh, didn't I tell you?" Syd asked.

"Tell me what?"

"Parker. He only has one leg. He hops around on that fake one he was wearing."

"Holy crap, that's so, so sad!" I said, truly moved. "Has he always been like that?"

"For such an educated, supposedly smart kid, you can ask some daft questions sometimes," Syd said. "Me and all of my siblings are born vampires, Jakey. It's the only kind of babies vampires produce. Born vampires never come out with birth defects. No, he lost it in an accident some time back. Ever since, he's been an impotent cripple. It's all very tragic." I thought I could detect some pang inside of sadness that Syd felt for his little brother, but it was hard to say.

"I don't understand," I said. "Every ridiculous wound you had healed right up. Can't this heal too?"

Syd shook his head. "Vampires heal pretty fast, as you've seen. The stronger we are, the faster we heal. Getting shot in the face point blank, that would kill a younger, weaker vampire. And enough critical damage will kill any of us. Of course, cutting off our heads will always kill us. Because vampires cannot re-grow things that have been sliced off."

I shook my head, feeling more and more sorry for the guy. I promised myself that I would not let this new information reduce my attraction to him.

He raised an eyebrow. "I'm tellin' ya all this, Jakey, because I trust you won't use this information against me. The last thing I need is you trying to cut my head off, or worse, trying to cut little Syd downstairs off."

"I'm concerned about your order of priorities there, Syd."

"You have to promise me that you'll never, ever attack me again," Syd said.

"Alright, I promise," I said. "So, if Parker can lose a leg, does that mean vampires can be paralyzed?"

"In theory, though I've never heard of that happening. Vampire bones are really strong, especially our spines. They can be damaged, but that damage will heal. Severing them usually means cutting the vampire in half, which would kill the vampire anyway."

I soaked in these grisly facts, hoping they might help me someday. "So, what if a paralyzed man was turned into a vampire?" I asked.

"Well, he'd stay paralyzed, because being a vampire does not heal that kind of injury." He looked at his watch. "It's well past normal supper time," he said. "Normally I'd be eating by now downstairs in the mess hall. Should we go down?"

"Are there other people down there?" I asked.

"There's a fancier family only dining room that Jericho eats in, but this one is where most everyone in Mareshead eats. Let's go down and show the rest of `em how to have a good time."

I shook my head. "I can't handle being around people that I have to lie to. Not tonight. I've had a really long, really awful day, Syd."

"Oh, come on, it wasn't so awful," he said. "What was so enormously tragic about it?"

"Hmm, let's see. I hardly got any sleep last night because I was sold by you in a poker match and then sexually harassed in a jail cell all night."

"Basically, you didn't get enough sleep because you were up late have some late night, country western debauched fun."

"There was no fun involved, Syd!"

"Anyway, technically you're complaining about yesterday now, so none of that even counts."

"Well, today I could have easily been killed when those bandits attacked our stagecoach. Disgustingly, I had to watch two vampires get their heads chopped off."

"Ohh, boo-hoo," Syd said. "I've seen hundreds of vampires die in a single day. And ya know what I did with myself that night? I went out and partied. Got laid."

"I was just almost killed by having my blood drained out of me by your father. And worst of all, I have to somehow pretend that I am madly in love with you when in fact, I hate everything you stand for."

"Well, well. Look who has his order of priorities screwed up, now, Jakey? Stay in here and brood like a temperamental teenager. I'm on my way downstairs to have some fun. I'll bring back some food with me when I come back."

"Alright Syd," I said. "Try to get me something healthy."

He left, and I carefully unpacked my things, making sure there were no creases in my clothing before I hung them up neatly in Syd's closet. I was lying on the bed, reading one of Ahmad's biographies when Syd came back in with a platter of food in his hands.

I smelled the food in the air. "What is that?" I asked.

"I ordered us a double order of my favorite." He pulled off the lid on the plate, and revealed a huge steaming pile of...

"Mac and cheese?" I said. "You have to be kidding me."

"Well, I couldn't exactly ask kitchen staff to waste all their time cooking something special just for you, now, could I?" he said. "Those people aren't exactly earning stellar wages."

"Well, did you have to order the unhealthiest food item you could possibly think of?" I asked.

"Hey, it could be worse," he said. "You're lucky I wasn't craving cheesecake."

"Did you at least get me some healthy protein or veggies to go with the heart attack?"

"I almost got some bacon to go along with this. Veggies will just take up good room in yer belly that should be filled with something tasty." He handed me the plate.

"Syd, I thought you ate reasonably healthy. Well, at least balanced."

"Uh-huh," he said, tapping his forehead. "All part of my genius f-ing plan. See, I knew you would be more impressed with me if I cooked food that you found appealing, instead of the junk I usually eat. Also, you'd be looking at my perfect body," he said, flexing his bicep to demonstrate. "You'd never buy that I could get that way while eating junk like M and C. In reality, vampires don't get fat, Jakey. I could eat nothing but ice-cream for the rest of my life, and my fat percentage wouldn't budge. Now, too bad for you, your kind still needs to watch how you eat."

"You're right, I'm not eating this," I said. "I'll just eat tomorrow."

"Oh right, starve yerself, `cause that's real healthy."

I rolled my eyes. "Fine, I'll eat a little, but since every bite has like thousands of calories, I shouldn't need much." I started to dip into the entrée with my fork.

"Well?" Syd said. "How is it?"

"It's very good. I mean, how could it not be good? It's pure cheese fat. But that's not the point."

"Well, it's good that you're eatin' since you'll be givin' it up tonight, so you'll need your strength. And the food helps you produce blood too."

I stopped eating. "Oh no, I am NOT giving up ANYTHNG tonight. Absolutely not!"

"Well, why the hell did I get you dinner for?" Syd asked. "I'm dining you because I'm gonna be bedding you tonight. `Cause I'm a true fucking romantic."

"No Syd, I said once a week. That's seven days from now."

"You never said a week from now," he said. "I've been expecting to get some tonight."

"You never said anything about tonight in our deal!" I said.

"Alright, fine," Syd said. "We'll compromise. In three days from now, that's when your first time comes."

"Fine."

"And then, every seven days after that."

"Obviously."

"Alrighty, I'm outta here," he said, moving towards the door.

"Where are you off to now?" I asked. "Back down to the mess hall to get that dessert?"

"More or less," he said. "I didn't feed yet tonight. I gotta find someone willing to have a roll in the hay with me. Shouldn't be hard at all. When I turn on the charm, I got attractive people lining up around the block."

"I was hoping that gunshot you took in the face might have knocked out that overly large part of your brain that is your ego. Guess my hopes have failed."

"Thank the lord," he said. "Truth be told, people flock here looking to be used. Even my brother could get laid here."

"Don't be a dick."

"I'll show you a dick, Jakey, a really big one."

"I've seen it and I'm not impressed," I lied.

"Well, ya don't have to say something so damn hateful to me, what have I done to deserve an insult like that? Alright, Jakey, don't wait up."

"You don't have to tell me that. I'll be sleeping on your settee." I said.

"Sleepin' on my what?"

I rolled my eyes. "On your little couch thing over there."

"You won't be comfortable over there, darling," he said. "You should just sleep in the bed with me. It's not like we haven't done that before."

"Things have changed."

"Fine, do what you want, but remember that everyone here thinks yer sharing a bed with me. So, no one who comes into our room should see ya sleeping anywhere else."

"We can pretend to like each other when people are in here witnessing our behavior. No need to pretend when no one can see us."

"Yes, but the maid comes in during the day."

"You seriously need a maid to clean your room? It's not that big, Syd."

"If the maid didn't come in, it would never get clean."

"Okay, I'll make sure not to be on the settee when the maid could potentially be here."

"And, if I pick someone up tonight, there's a chance I would bring them back here," he said.

I rolled my eyes. "Really? That doesn't sound like something a fiancé would do."

"Well, a fiancé would be letting me feed off them daily. If you want to do that for me, I won't bring anyone else home."

"Forget it," I said. "Bring two dozen people over, for all I care."

"Just make sure yer not sleeping on the, um, sauté, when I come home, just so we won't arouse suspicion if I have a guest."

"It's pronounced settee!"

"Whatever. What's the goddamned difference?"

"One is a piece of furniture and the other is a French cooking technique that is way, way, beyond your cooking prowess."

"Thanks Mr. Webster! Are we in agreement or not?"

"Fine. Now, leave already."

He left, and I took a bath and got ready for bed in my sleeping shorts, kneeled by the bed with the cross in my hand and thanked God for seeing my family and me through the day, asking for the strength to make our safety permanent. Afterwards, I got into bed, and then turned out the light. I banished the gruesome images of vampires being decapitated from my mind, and then fell asleep.

I figured I would wake up when Syd came in. Instead, I woke up feeling major poking in the butt of my shorts as I realized I was getting spooned from behind. I could smell his cologne and feel his warmth surround me. He had his arms clasped around my body, and I could feel his hard dickhead spear the small of my back, forming a wet spot there of precum.

This was not acceptable. I got up in the darkness and walked over to the settee, taking a pillow and blanket with me in defiance.