Dust --Chapter 4 PG-13

[librarian_7]

Usual disclaimers…I don’t own Josef. All the plot and the other characters, though, are mine.

Thanks as always to my beta, Lilly, for making my chapter better.

Dust

Chapter 4


Sally could only watch as Mr. Constantine arranged the pliant limbs of the unconscious woman on the seat of the stage, cradling her upper body so that her head could rest against his shoulder. The disturbing watery trickle of blood had stopped, and apart from the depression at her temple, she appeared unharmed. Still, Sally thought, no one could mistake that loose fall of her body for the relaxation of sleep. The clear lilac and mauve of her dress was smudged with dirt, and there was a smear of dust down her pale cheek. Her golden hair had partly fallen from its elegant arrangement, and she looked very little like the pristine creature she had been such a short time before.

The interior of the stage was dim. The bandits had ordered them to pull the shades on all the windows, and Josef had given a bitter smile as he and Sally complied. The sun had been brutal, and even this flimsy shelter was better than none.

The stage jolted along, but as far as Sally could tell, Mr. Constantine was having no difficulties at all in holding the injured woman steady. She thought he must be very strong, to do that. She turned Iris’s hat nervously in her fingers. The lace was stiff, but the dyed feathers whispered over her skin like a ghostly kiss. The netting of the cunning little veil was insubstantial as the fluff from cottonwood trees. Sally knew she should be just as upset over the deaths of those three men lying in the brush behind them, but somehow seeing Miss Beaumont in this state was different. Worse. Perhaps because Mr. Constantine was so clearly upset. His eyes were dry, his face still, but his free hand never ceased its motions, stroking, petting, soothing where no soothing would be felt. It broke her heart to see him. As she watched, she could feel her eyes fill.

“There’s no hope, Mr. Constantine?”

He looked up, as though becoming aware of her for the first time. “No,” he said abruptly. “She’s dying. It’s just a question of when.”

Sally looked away. “I’m so sorry. I can see you care about her. And I know she cared about you.”

He glanced down at Iris’s empty face. “She was…vain and demanding. But—she sustained me, in her way.”

Sally thought about what she had seen, the two of them together the evening before. They had seemed so easy, so intimate. She’d hardly even learned to be relaxed around her Jim, yet. “Had you known Miss Beaumont very long?” she asked, curious.

“No time at all. A year, perhaps two.”

“She’s very beautiful.”

Josef’s eyes unfocused, as though he were seeing the past, not the present, before him. “I met her through—a friend. She was, was luminous.” His mouth curved in a reminiscent smile. “Her name wasn’t really Iris Beaumont, you know. She told me, when she came from somewhere she called Yonkers, that she didn’t think Sadie Schwartz was a properly enticing name for a stage actress. So she changed it to the most elegant name she could think of.” He shifted to pull a glove partly off one of her hands, and began to massage the narrow strip of skin exposed between sleeve and glove. “Pretty Sadie could have married a nice boy, lived a nice life. But my brave, foolish Iris—she’s going to die young. And I can’t do anything about it.”

“Or she could have died young at home, for any number of reasons,” Sally replied. “You’re only human. Don’t blame yourself.”

“I see no one else here responsible for this.” Josef choked back a bitter laugh. Human, he thought. If she knew…

“What about these men? These—these robbers who think they can just steal everything we have, our lives, even? That Weston character was supposed to be guarding us, and he threw us to the wolves.” Sally’s voice was quiet, but intense. She surprised even herself with her vehemence.

“He will pay for that. They all will.” Josef said softly, and Sally shivered and crossed her hands reflexively across her middle. He sounded as though he were making a vow.

“That’s fine,” she said, “but don’t get yourself killed trying to do it.” She nodded toward Iris. “You know she was trying to protect you. When she got hurt.”

Josef frowned. “That,” he said, “doesn’t make it better.”

“No,” Sally said, considering. She searched for the words to express her thoughts. “I suppose it doesn’t, from one point of view. But, Mr. Constantine, even if she didn’t know it would end up like this, she had to have known that—that there was a good chance she’d be hurt, or worse, and she still wanted to try and help you.”

His frown deepened. “I had the situation under control.”

Sally looked him in the eye. This was the kind of thing her mother had scolded her about, time and again, but she was going to speak her mind, and if it angered the tall man opposite her, well, she’d take that chance. “No,” she said. “No, you didn’t. That man—that man was going to kill you.”

Josef snorted. “He was going to try.”

“How could you have stopped it?”

That brought him up short. He had been on the verge of forgetting that Mrs. Watkins was not—fully informed of the situation. How could he have stopped it, without having to kill everyone—including this chit of a girl who was scolding him now? And even had he wanted to do that, as enervated as he was in the bright sunshine, he might not have succeeded. This was, he realized, no time for idle regrets. “Mrs. Watkins,” he said, giving way to impulse, “if we can stay alive until nightfall, I promise you, I will get us out of this.”

Sally smiled at him. “I believe you,” she said. “It’s a deal.”

The coach was jolting even more than usual, but whether because of a less-practiced hand on the reins, or because they’d turned off the main road, the passengers had no idea.

For the moment, Josef was pre-occupied with Iris. She was dying. Less dramatically than she’d done anything in her life, he supposed, but still dying. Her heartbeat, initially steady, if fast, seemed weaker, changing its pace erratically. Her eyes had shut completely now, and he marveled, as he always had, at the fine translucence of her skin, the delicacy of her features.

If circumstances had been different, he might have considered Turning her. It hadn’t really been his plan to do so; he rarely considered Turning the women who fed him. So few of them managed to interest him past a year or two. Iris, though, could have been a different story. God knew, she had the ruthless drive that might have made a good vampire out of her. If her personality was abrasive, well, sires and fledglings weren’t irrevocably tied together.

On the other hand, two considerations barred the way. He dared not attempt to Turn her here, in a confined space, in the presence of a single human. Fledglings, in his centuries of experience, woke hungry. And without a shred of control over their transformed bodies. He’d promised to protect the pregnant female. Putting her into the proximity of a newly Turned vampire was unthinkable. Although he had to smile faintly at the idea of those bandits opening the stagecoach door whenever they reached their destination…it would be like loosing a maddened lioness on a flock of unsuspecting sheep. With a watchful old lion backing her play. That could be…entertaining, but perhaps unwise. He preferred a more subtle solution to his problems.

All that aside, even with the certainty that his own formidable strength would be enough to restrain a fledgling, were he not still shaking off the effects of sun exposure, there was another problem. That depression at her temple.

He’d seen it before, had experienced it firsthand. A Turning, a woman with a similar head injury, had ended badly. It had been long ago, and at the time he had no reason to think it wouldn’t be well. Her bones had knit, her flesh renewed itself, but when she opened her eyes he knew instantly that even if the tissue of her brain had healed, some part of her, some vital part of her was dead. She had snarled like an animal, and attacked, her fledgling strength powered to violent action by ravening, senseless hunger.

She was not the first feral vamp he’d seen, but she was the first of his own get he’d been forced to destroy. He’d wept as he’d burnt her body. And since then, he’d vowed never to even attempt to Turn a brain-injured human. It was better to let Iris slip away into the darkness, and although he didn’t often think in such terms, he prayed she’d forgive him for his failure to protect her. Even a creature such as himself was not entirely immune to regret.

He was drifting, and he knew it. Now was not the time for introspection. He should be planning, but for the moment, his main idea was to seize any opportunity that presented itself, and bury his fangs in it.

For now, he had to finesse a bit of brutal pragmatism past the human across from him, and hope she would understand.

“Mrs. Watkins?” he asked softly, “I don’t think Miss Beaumont is going to last much longer.” He paused. “Forgive me for asking, but—could you avert your eyes for a few minutes? I’d like to say my farewell to her as privately as possible.”

Sally put her hand out toward him in sympathy. “Of course,” she said. “I understand.” She bowed her head a little, letting the deep brim of the poke bonnet block her vision, and folded her hands in her lap. “I’ll pray for both of you, Mr. Constantine.”

“That is—appreciated, Mrs. Watkins,” Josef replied. “We all have need of any help we can get.”

He waited, dividing his attention between the women, until he was sure Sally was deep in concentration, then unfastened the cameo from the high neck of Iris’s dress, opening the tiny buttons beneath it to expose the creamy skin of her neck. He looked at the faint marks left by his fangs, remembering how willingly she had come to him, how greedy she had been to experience the sensation he offered. He stripped the glove from his hand, and laid his cool fingers over the scars on her throat. Always before even his touch had been enough to make her arch against him, in anticipation. Now, however, there was no response. He had not much appetite for her blood, but necessity drove him. He closed his eyes, cast his mind to more appealing images, and felt his fangs extend.

Sally hadn’t intended to peek. She had intended to allow him the privacy he’d requested. She thought perhaps he feared being overcome with his emotions when Miss Beaumont died, and didn’t want a woman to see his tears. Men were like that, she knew. When her brothers cried as young boys, they got the back of Pa’s hand and “None of that, now.” When her little sister Hannah had died last year, harum-scarum Hannah who had been Pa’s favorite, she’d seen him drag a rough hand across his eyes, and blunder out of the house to leave her mother to wash and lay out the body. Mama had cried, to be sure, silent tears leaking down her cheeks, but not Pa.

So she certainly hadn’t intended to intrude on Mr. Constantine’s privacy. But she couldn’t help hearing his low murmur even with the noise of the harness and the rattle of the stage on the road. Not enough to make out words, but only the soothing rumble of his voice. It reminded her of the way Jim had talked to her, those few nights they’d spent together, after their wedding, when he’d held her close after they had—well. She blushed. She was supposed to be praying for poor Miss Beaumont, not daydreaming about Jim.

But the road was rutted, and the stage jumped and lurched. And when it took a particularly violent roll to one side, she had to throw out her hands, had to grab the window frame to keep from falling off her seat. And in doing so, it was impossible to keep her head discreetly bowed.

It was just a glimpse, just a brief flash, but what she saw—what she thought she saw—Mr. Constantine’s head was bent to the woman’s neck, her collar unbuttoned, his mouth fastened to her skin. As though, impossibly, he were drinking. A thin line of blood had escaped, and Sally could see it running toward the back of Miss Beaumont’s neck. She dropped the brim of her bonnet, shutting out the image. She didn’t want to see this. It made no sense to her.

Shortly, she heard Mr. Constantine shifting Miss Beaumont, and when he spoke to Sally, she was slow to look up.

“Mrs. Watkins?” he said. “She’s gone.” He paused. “Thank you for giving us this—this last time together.”

Sally searched his face for some sign, some indication that her quick perception had been the truth. He seemed less pale, his face less marked with strain, but so sad, so tired still. What she had seen was frightening, no doubt—but whatever Mr. Constantine had done, she could not seem to bring herself to fear him.

He held out something in his bare palm. “I’d like you to have this,” he said. The pale gray and white of the agate, surrounded by gold, was astonishingly delicate, the carving fine and careful. It appeared to be a portrait of a young man, with the loose flowing hair popular sixty years earlier, and it bore, Sally thought, a good bit of resemblance to Mr. Constantine himself.

“Miss Beaumont’s cameo? But that’s far too grand for me.” She shook her head. “And besides, it must be a family heirloom.”

“I’d like you to have it,” he repeated. “Please consider it a favor to me, to accept.”

Sally nodded, and held out her own hand. The brush of his fingers as he placed it in her palm, and folded her hand around it, sent a small shock up her arm. His hand was colder than she expected.

“Hide it someplace safe,” he said.

Sally nodded again, thinking. She glanced at Miss Beaumont’s body. He’d placed it in the corner of the seat, looking for all the world as though she were sleeping. Her high collar was buttoned again, neatly. But on the pale lavender of the fabric, Sally could see two dark spots, like tiny bloodstains, seeping through.

Link to Chapter 5

[cassysj]

I am sure they are going to pay. With Iris strengthening him one last time, there will be consequences.

Poor Josef, really needs to permanently leave the turning business, he doesn't have the best of luck with it.

I love Sally and I'm glad Josef gave her the cameo.

[jenstc2003]

What a sad moment for J! I know that he'll get his revenge... should be interesting to see how. Beautifully done as always!

[eris]

I'm not sure given Sally's personality that a new vamp would be the most dangerous thing in that coach. And I'm curious as to what last minute save in Weston's favor is going to keep him alive once J comes out of there himself.

[LadyAilith]

Poor Iris. She just wanted to protect Josef. At the very least, she saved him from revealing what he is. It's kind of ironic, really. She wanted to save him and ended up doing so with the last of her life's blood. And Sally - what a strong and brave little thing she is! Traveling back then was difficult, dangerous, and dirty. I can't imagine doing it while pregnant!

I wouldn't want to be the robbers. They are so going to pay. It's just a matter of time.

I could just read and read you work, Lucky, and never get tired of it. You do such an amazing job of taking your readers to the place where your stories are set - I swear that I can almost feel the gritty dust on my skin...

[tucutecats]

What a great story, more, more, can't wait for another update. you really are the best.Thank you for all your wonderful stories.Liz

[moonlight_vixen]

Poor Josef, to have Iris leave him under those circumstances. His goodbye was incredibly tender, and I loved that he gave Sally the cameo.

Now that Josef has regained some of his strength, there are definitely going to be some consequences rendered during the remaining of this trip!

Can't wait for the next chapter

[mitzie]

Wonderful update! Even though I didn't like Iris, she tried to protect Josef and paid with her life. Very sad!! I'm glad he didn't seriously consider turning her. He really must think highly of Sally to have given her the cameo.

I love this story and can't wait for more...

mitzie

[allegrita]

Lucky, when I read this story I am completely immersed in the experience I'm reading. I can't think of higher praise than that.

What a touching chapter this is. Josef's grief for Iris is no less real for being that of an immortal for a mortal, and tempered by pragmatism at that. Josef's musings about the possible outcomes of an attempt to Turn Iris are fascinating, and the idea of a Turning gone horribly wrong due to brain injury makes a lot of sense to me. I can just see Josef going through that thought process and coming to the sad conclusion that Iris's kindest fate would be to die. Your description of Josef taking Iris's final gift is not only beautiful and tender, but very sad... and Sally saw! Hmmm...... she's a woman who knows how to keep her own council, but this will definitely have repercussions at some point.

Sally is a really remarkable person, on many levels. I hope her Jim is worthy of her... and if he turns out not to be, I hope Josef does something for her. I can see them becoming partners in some enterprise.

I imagine there are plenty of fireworks to come in the next chapter, and I'm on tenterhooks in anticipation!

[one.zebra]

Wonderful update, thank you!
We know our Josef.....justice will be served upon them....
Sally is a remarkable woman..very brave indeed....

[librarian_7]

Thanks to all who have read, and commented...now, those of you who disliked Iris in the earlier chapters, perhaps you were forgetting she was one Josef chose...he's rarely wrong in his assessments of freshies. After all, he knows them down to the blood. She had hidden depths, I think.

And yes, I think it's safe to say that Josef is about done with playing along with these bozos...but we'll have to see, won't we?

Lucky

[RangerCM]

Beautiful chapter. Such a tender moment. I'm so glad we got to see Josef actually in a tender scene like this. It makes it that much easier to imagine him in your story here.

OK, now let's see Josef kick some a**!!

[MoonShadow]

Lucky,
I'm sorry it took me a couple of days to get here but I missed the Pony Express rider and had to walk...

Let me begin by complimenting you on another beautifully written chapter. I loved the delicate touch you used with the descriptive narrative regarding Josef's inner demons. I believe that Josef carried a myriad of ghosts within his soul. You give voice to them without overwhelming the character, thank you!

The thought of Josef being forced to extract his pound of flesh for the loss of Iris is enough to raise the hackles of even the most ardent Josef freshie.
thank you again for yet another lovely chapter, I'll be waiting for the next one.

MS

[Lucy]

Such close confines..... and the view of the feeding. Can't wait until nightfall!

Ever the gentleman, even in danger his generosity is so "Josef"

[francis]

I can't believe I missed this update when I was away. Glad I caught the coach.
Poor Josef has to make a tough decision. He can't turn Iris, he can't save her, so he takes her last parting gift to strengthen him for the revenge. I wonder how much more Sally will have to see until she can no longer pretend it didn't happen. And did he give her the cameo to hide it, or was it just kindness? Nothing Josef ever does is easily explained.
I really hope the thugs get what they deserve, but how Weston is going to survive is a question that keeps me waiting eagerly for more - besides your great writing.
Wonderful story, and I love historical stories so much anyway.