The Mammoth Book Of Vampire Stories Written By Women

But that had been a year ago, and he didn't see that the Yankees were being pushed back. Sometimes the Union forces won a battle, sometimes his people did. And even when they did, there didn't seem to be an advantage. More men got killed and injured, some lay in the fields for days, some were never found. And the officers didn't seem to care for their men, as he thought they would. They weren't the ones at the beginning of the charges. It was the young men like him, some men hardly more than boys, or the old men who should have been at home being waited on by their sons and daughters. It was these men who died, and whose bodies the horses of the mounted officers picked their way over.

Foster rubbed a hand across his face, felt the dampness at the corners of his eyes. A year of fighting, of eating off the land and mostly that meant not eating, of being either too hot or too cold, and mostly too wet, had soured him on the army — Northern or Southern.

He knew now that he should have stayed home, should have laid in as much food as possible, as many supplies as he could find, should have barricaded the house, and kept Sarah and the others together, and maybe they could have fought off anyone who approached.

Maybe it wasn't too late now, though; he had to believe that. As soon as he got out of here he was going home. The doctors might say he was fit to go to the front lines again, but he wasn't. He was going back to Sarah. He would worry about the Yankees when and if they came.

He had no appetite that day. He knew his fever was returning, and nothing tasted good. He laid on the cot, never opening his eyes, hardly moving.

All he could think of was his family, and he wondered if he would ever see them again.

That night Ariadne returned. She was closer now to Foster, and he could see the darkness of her lovely eyes; they looked almost as if they'd been lined with something black; Sarah had called it kohl and said all the fancy ladies wore it. Ariadne's bodice was lower than he'd seen before, and her breasts were full and pale in the dimness.

She murmured to the young man three beds down from Foster, and he responded lethargically. She kissed the man, caressed the back of his hands with her curling eyelashes, and Foster once more felt the stirrings inside him.

He turned his head, though, so he wouldn't watch, but he couldn't escape the sounds of the couple's passion. Illicit passion, he told himself, but those were empty words. What did illicit mean anyway when he'd seen men blown to bits by cannon, horses that screamed in their death agonies?

Once more Foster smelled the scent of Ariadne. Some spice almost like cloves or perhaps cinnamon mixed with musk, and he licked his lips. That strange perfume almost overcame the stench of blood and pus and sweat that pervaded the tent.

When he looked back, she was gone.

The next day when the doctor came, Foster asked when he could leave the hospital. The doctor seemed preoccupied and merely said soon. Still, those few words heartened Foster because before then the doctor had refused to say.

The nurses came in and carried out the body of the young man he had seen the night before.

Foster looked across at Long, who was sitting up once more. "Another one."

"Yeah," Long said. He was chewing a wad and leaned over his bed and spat into the chamberpot.

"She's getting closer," Foster said, his voice low.

"What's that?"

"The woman I saw."

"You on that again? Long shook his head. "You need a woman, boy; I can see it plain and simple."

Foster nodded, slightly distracted, then said, "But there was one. I saw her. She was at the sides of those three men — one of 'em that Irishman and now they're all dead."

"Plenty o' men here are dead, and there ain't been no woman with 'em."

"Not this time."

Long shook his head again and pushed himself down and rolled over, and Foster knew their conversation was over.

That night the woman brought with her the scent of wood smoke and spices, and she knelt beside the red-faced man.

In the morning he was dead. And when the nurses hauled him out, Foster could see that the drinker was no longer red-faced. The dead man was pale, paler than he should have been even in death, and he seemed to have shrunk down upon himself, as if something his blood, his soul had been sucked out of him.

Foster looked at Long. "She's coming down this way."

"You're crazy, you know. Crazy." Long concentrated on drinking his broth.

Foster pushed back the sheet and swung his legs over the side. Momentarily he felt light-headed, and his arm pained him. He tried to push up from the cot to stand, trembled, and fell back. He couldn't escape, not even if he wanted to. He managed to get under the covers again, and saw that Long was watching him.

"You could help me," Foster said. He hated to ask for help — it wasn't his way — but there was no other choice.

"Help you?"

Foster nodded. "To escape."