Half-Blood Shannon West

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 Half-Blood

SHANNON WEST
 Half-Blood
Copyright © 2023 Shannon West
Published by Painted Hearts Publishing

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Half-Blood
Copyright © 2023 Shannon West

Publication Date: February 2023

Author: Shannon West
Editor: Mildred Jordan
All cover art and logo copyright © 2023 by Painted Hearts Publishing

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part,
without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or
dead is strictly coincidental.
 Author’s Note:

A few parts of this book were previously published years ago under a different title and in the
genre of Contemporary Romantic Suspense. I was never happy with it, to be honest, it was written
years ago, before trigger warnings became prominent, and this book needs some. There are instances
of violence and domestic abuse between one of the MCs and a former partner. And when I got the
rights back after the previous publisher went out of business, I decided to completely rework the
book. The book has been substantially rewritten and changed to the point that it's barely
recognizable. The previous book is out of print, but there could be a few faithful readers out there
with very good memories who may find a few of the conversations in the book familiar. The book is
now a Paranormal Romance about Vampire Hunters. The vampires in this book are not the romantic,
sexy ones I've written in the past, but true monsters, like they are in Bram Stoker's Dracula. The
heroes are the Hunters, instead. I really hope you enjoy it and thank you for reading.
“The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy
and vague.
Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?”
—Poe
 Chapter One

Will Logan

The graveyard was silent as…well, a tomb. And there were plenty of those to go around in this
cemetery that was first established back in 1857, according to a plaque on the front gate. This
elaborately scrolled iron barrier was secured each night at sunset, but we’d easily picked the lock
and gone in, carefully closing it back in case any cops or security guards rode by to check it later on.
We felt our way along, using only the moon to light our way, walking farther in before we fixed
elastic bands around our foreheads to use our headlamps. That way we could keep our hands free in
case of trouble.
It wasn’t only the undead who could hurt us here. There were also occasional reports of other
intruders, who came for one reason or another, like the kids who dared themselves to go ghost-
hunting, or even the homeless or indigent who might be desperate enough to seek shelter in the old
vaults near the entrance.
“Ready?” my partner, Theo Conway asked. The two of us were accompanied by Leslie Moran,
our third on this team and an operative I hadn’t worked with before. We weren’t alone. Another small
team had entered the cemetery from the opposite side of the hill, so there were six of us Hunters in
all.
“Ready,” I replied, hoping the nerves I was feeling weren’t showing up in my voice.
It was dark as the inside of one of these tombs in the old graveyard, and the gloom only increased
as we climbed and practically felt our way along under the thick trees and foliage near the top. This
place was called Myrtle Hill, named for the crepe myrtles and trailing myrtles planted all around the
entrance and near some of the gravesites on nine ascending terraces. The graveyard was massive,
covering thirty-two acres and the older graves were mostly at the top, though a nineteenth century U.S.
president’s first lady, along with a large group of Confederate soldiers were buried in plots on the
first level.
We had no wish to disturb any of them. On the contrary, we were here to investigate a possible
nest of vampires that were desecrating this peaceful place. We had reason to believe from recent
reports of missing persons and strange, unresolved murders in the area that a small nest had taken up
residence on one of the large upper terraces. As we climbed, the silence thickened, the hair rose on
the back of my neck, and we drew a bit closer, the smell of vampires hit my nose—a pungent, sickly
odor of rot and grave dirt. Conway’s shoulders were almost touching mine and Moran trod on my
heels as we continued upward.
Conway, who was in the lead, stopped abruptly near the top and whispered to us, though I still
worried that he was too loud and would warn them of our presence. “We’re close now. Check your
weapons.”
I reached for the iron knives I had shoved down inside both my boots and touched the heavy gold
cross at my neck, pulling it out from under my coat. Legend had it right for a change when it came to
crosses. Vampires hated them. Holy objects and iron implements were the best weapons against
vampires, though movies and TV programs usually had characters using wooden stakes to kill a
bloodsucker. Romantic legend, maybe, but wood wasn’t enough to keep a vampire from rising. Iron
and silver had been used for centuries and was still considered to be the most effective.
I had iron daggers in a holster around my waist, and even a couple of extras shoved down in my
waistband. The more knives I had, the safer I felt. Conway was armed with iron implements too, as
well as a pistol containing silver bullets. Leslie was carrying vials of blessed holy water, along with
several long, thick iron nails, like the kind they used on railroads, along with a lethal looking
skewer. Vampires were also susceptible to prayer beads, sacred pictures or statues of Jesus and the
Virgin Mary. Any other blessed objects that you might have on hand would work, and that may have
indicated their demonic origin.
It was Bram Stoker’s characters in his novel who popularized vampires like Dracula being
called the “undead.” And according to Church lore, that’s what they were, reanimated corpses, kept
from corruption by demon sorcery. We weren’t sure why or how, but it didn’t matter, really. All
anyone really needed to know was that vampires were evil incarnate, and whatever spark of humanity
they might have once possessed was forgotten long ago.
The type of stakes wasn’t the only thing that books and movies got wrong about the creatures.
Vampires weren’t bothered by garlic; their skin didn’t glitter in the sunlight; and they weren’t at all
beautiful, though they could use demonic enchantment to enthrall their victims and compel them to
think so.
Vampires were vicious predators, who searched for their victims somewhere off the beaten path.
They might be found on a lonely road or pathway through the woods, a deserted alley or an empty
building or parking garage late at night. Sometimes they were seen near graveyards, hiding out in the
dark tombs and mausoleums during the day and taking the occasional lone visitor at dusk.
All these places could be considered their hunting grounds, but they didn’t normally choose a
victim whose family would come looking for them if they suddenly went missing. On the contrary,
their prey was usually those on the fringes or the edges of society. It was the outliers, the stragglers
and the homeless who were their primary victims. The ones who would be unnoticed if they didn’t
turn up, or at least not for a while.
They fucked that whole scenario up recently with the murder of a police officer who had parked
near the gates of Myrtle Hill Cemetery. He wasn’t one of the forgotten, and naturally, he was missed
right away, as soon as he didn’t answer on the hourly check-ins to 911. The report of his death and the
general outcry over its violence was what had alerted us to the possibility of vampires working in the
area.
When his fellow officers had come looking for him, they found his empty patrol car, along with
blood smeared all over the upholstery. Though the grass was torn up nearby, like a struggle had
occurred, what was left of the policeman wasn’t discovered until after daybreak, and very little
remained. Just a few teeth, some hair and scraps of clothing. The police had been keeping it quiet,
saying privately that after he was murdered, some kind of scavenger animals, something like coyotes,
must have dragged his body away. They had called in forensic help from the Georgia Bureau of
Investigations, as well as Natural Resources to help track the “animal” down. And our operatives
inside the agency had notified us.
Vampires were only interested in blood, but in our experience, a missing body was the work of
one or more ghouls. They often cruised vampire kills and ate the remains of their victims. They
devoured the bodies, consumed everything down to teeth and hair, leaving very little behind. After
looking into other recent deaths and disappearances in the area, we believed a nest of vampires, with
accompanying ghouls, must be operating close by—most likely hiding in the graveyard itself—and
they must be getting desperate for victims to come after a policeman, just because of his proximity.
Either that or they were feral enough not to care. Either way, they all had to be exterminated.
We were at the top of the highest terrace by this time, and I could see the headlamps of the others
closing in on our location from the other side. Conway turned to me to signal that he was going to
inspect a fairly large mausoleum nearby when another whiff of rot and the coppery smell of blood
alerted me to the presence of a vampire close by only seconds before all hell broke loose.
Out of the darkness, one of the vampires flew toward me, knocking the iron dagger from my hand.
I launched myself backward, out of the reach of the thing’s claws, aware of other battles erupting right
along beside me. A gunshot from nearby told me Conway had fired on one of them and unholy
screams and howls erupted all around us. I heard the shouts and grunts of the other agents, locked in
their own battles, as I kicked up at the vampire bending over me, his claws extended. I rolled quickly
to the side and scrabbled back to my feet, swinging my dagger in front of me and catching him on the
side of his ugly head.
 He clawed at my blade, and stumbled backward to get away, but I pulled out another dagger and
leaped toward him, thrusting it into his chest. I glanced around for Moran and saw her on her back,
holding one of the creatures at bay by flinging a vial of holy water in its face, but she was barely
hanging on. The thing was hissing and drooling as it loomed over her, and I knew it was only seconds
away from tearing out her throat. I pulled out my blade, then launching myself at the vampire, I drove
my dagger through the back of its neck so hard it came out the other side. It fell, clawing at the dagger
and badly wounded. Leslie leaped on top of it and drove one of her iron spikes directly into its heart.
A vampire appeared without warning in front of me, maybe six feet away, its long, white fangs
extended, and its hands formed into claws. I hurled another dagger, stabbing the creature in the chest.
It fell back, looking down at the dagger with horror, but the blade wasn’t in the vampire’s heart, or it
would already have been dead. I rushed it, forcing it down on its back across a nearby grave, so I
could pull the dagger from the thing’s chest to make another attempt to bury it in something more vital.
I stabbed him again and again, and I knew I was successful, when his body began to crumble into ash.
This one had been an ancient one then—only the oldest crumbled as they died.
In all, we killed seven vampires and two ghouls who had come out to see if there were bodies or
blood they could scavenge as the vampires killed us. They hadn’t realized we were Hunters until it
was far too late. We made quick work of them, as ghouls were far easier to kill than vampires. Then
we worked on clean-up.
“Check the bodies,” Conway called out to us. “See if any of them is the half-blood we’re looking
for.”
We’d been on the trail of that vicious creature for weeks now, only recently tracking him to
Atlanta, Georgia, and this small town where Myrtle Hill was located was only some seventy miles
north of that city. We set out immediately to find and eradicate this new nest and because of its
proximity, it warranted a look for the vicious half-blood.
“No sign of anything but full-bloods and those ghouls,” one of our agents with the other group
called out. “He may have been here and gotten away, though. I thought I saw some dark shadows
scattering like roaches at the bottom of the hill, just as you began your attack.”
It figured. Dylan Malone, the one we were looking for was intelligent, cunning and literally had
the luck of the devil. He had been eluding us now for months. Every time we’d managed to get close,
he’d slipped away. It was a popular misconception that vampires slept during the day. They had no
need for sleep. Full-bloods, however abhorred the sun, and it would burn them to ash if they were out
in it for a long stretch of time, just like in the old legends.
Half-bloods, on the other hand, weren’t bothered at all by sunlight, and it was one of the ways
Malone easily passed as human if and when he needed to.
 Malone’s vampire master, the one responsible for all this, had gotten into a wild altercation with
police, in New York City about a year ago. There had been a fight with a boyfriend Malone had been
living with at the time. The fight had spilled out into the hallway, and the intended victim’s screams
for help were so bloodcurdling they had brought several of the usually indifferent New Yorkers to the
doors of their apartments to see what was going on. Many of them had called the police, and one of
them even allowed the intended victim to come inside their apartment, where they barricaded the
door with furniture. Officers, who happened to be in the building on a totally unrelated case, had
responded quickly, managing to get there just as the door was being battered down. They shot the
vampire, apparently stunning him, but he came back to life as they were loading him in an ambulance
for transport.
The wild and bloody fight that ensued had alerted Hunters to the vampire’s existence. Our
counterparts in New York had tracked him down after he escaped and exterminated him, staking him
through the heart, burning his body and scattering the ashes. Malone, along with the boyfriend who
had both been involved in the fight, had been taken to a hospital to treat their extensive wounds.
Dylan Malone’s boyfriend recovered after a week or so, but Malone, whose wounds were even
more extensive, had been treated by doctors there at the hospital and then sedated. Hunters were
alerted by the Church and came to collect him the next day before he regained consciousness,
immediately transferring him to a Benedictine monastery in the countryside of upper state New York,
where a few of the monks specialized in treating the victims of vampires.
In some cases, victims of vampire attack could be saved by the vigorous and rapid application of
the medicines and ointments developed over the centuries by the monks. The methods they used were
equal parts religious and supernatural, but they worked on those not too far gone. All were designed
to stop the decline of the victim into full vampirism. But Malone had been unlucky. He didn’t react
well to their medicines and potions. They had kept him there for weeks, sedated while they tried their
best to heal him. They even tried blood transfusions. But to no avail.
The decision had regretfully been made to put Malone down. It sounded cruel, but it would have
been much crueler to allow him to live as he was and become a demonic creature, a half-blood, who
would eventually devolve into full vampirism. He would then be forced to kill others and drink
human blood in order to remain in some hideous half existence. What happened next was a disaster. I
had read the account in the journal of one of the monks charged with his care.
Once we decided that nothing further could be done, and the patient was showing signs of
waking up, no matter how much sedation we’d given him, we decided to employ our last recourse.
We hooked him up to an IV of pentobarbital, as was our standard procedure. At first it seemed to
be working, and his heartbeat slowed considerably. Then to our horror, he began thrashing on the
table, moaning loudly. We didn’t want him to feel any pain, so we administered more pentobarbital.
Suddenly his eyes flew open, and he roused, ripping. the IV from his arm. He seized Brother
Andrew, the closest of us to him and tore out his throat with one lethal swipe of his claws. He
pulled the brother’s body toward him and as we watched in horror, he began drinking his blood.
When the rest of us tried to intervene, he fought us off with teeth and claws and killed another of
our brothers despite our best efforts to stop him. It was only by throwing a vial of holy water in his
face that I am alive to relay this account. It sizzled on his skin, and he howled and writhed and fell
on the floor. One of the other brothers and I were able to escape, baring the door behind us, but by
the time we came back with weapons and more of our brothers, the half-blood had escaped through
a window, high up on the wall.
In the large doses Malone was given, the pentobarbital should have quickly rendered him
unconscious, and then shut down his heart and brain functions. Death would have quickly followed,
but though the dose they gave Malone should have worked, it didn’t, and that was the first indication
that he had devolved much more rapidly than the monks knew, so that not much short of a stake to the
heart would kill him. Dylan Malone escaped, leaving the drained and mutilated bodies of the
attendants scattered across the room.
Later, Hunters began to get reports of sightings of him from time to time back in New York City
again. He showed up at one of the theaters where he once worked and was seen in the backstage area.
He was sometimes seen on the streets at night, but always managed to blend quickly into the shadows.
We strongly suspected he had begun killing again, because a few drained bodies began to show up in
the city morgues. Most of the victims were homeless, so we suspected he was trying to blend in with
that population. For the past year since, he had evaded recapture, as Hunters lost track of him.
He was finally tracked to Georgia, near the city of Atlanta. That’s when Conway and I began
hunting him, as the Southeast was our primary area.
I’d had my own encounter with vampires over ten years earlier, after I had graduated from
college and decided to go with some friends on a backpacking trip around Europe. Back then, if
anyone had told any of us that vampires were real, we’d have laughed in their face.
Three of us had started that journey, but I was the only one who had come out of it alive. And the
fact that I had was solely due to the Hunters who had found me still clinging to life among the dead
bodies of my friends and had rescued me.
My recovery had been long and difficult, and since the outcome was uncertain for a while, the
Hunters who saved me had to keep my rescue a secret. For my part, I had few memories I could call
on for a long time, probably an attempt of my brain and my psyche to keep me sane. I had seen too
much, experienced too much shock and loss, and for a time I, too, had to stay in a monastery run by
Catholic brothers, being nursed back to health. Meanwhile the Hunters protected me from the nest of
vampires who wanted to finish what they’d started.
Years passed, and I had decided to stay in Europe afterward and join the organization that had
saved me. Because I’d ingested a little of the vampire’s blood, I’d had a long recovery, and
afterward, I found that I had been physically altered. That took even more mental adjustment.
Despite the monks’ best efforts, my experience had changed my body into something not
altogether human. I had become what the Church called a half-blood. The Benedictine brothers had
plied me with their potions, preventing me from changing so much I had to be put down, but I was
different from the man I used to be.
I was faster and stronger now. I could hear and see better. I rarely needed sleep, and for a very
long time, food absolutely disgusted me. I still ate very little, and mostly craved meat, cooked as rare
as I could get it. I’d been told I would age much differently—much more slowly than a normal human.
I was a hybrid—a half-blood. Most of the Hunters were, as we had all been attacked by vampires at
some point in our lives and been healed enough by the monks to stay human. But just barely.
Over the centuries the Church had been fighting the legions of demons, they had discovered the
enhanced speed and strength of hybrids like us and had decided to put it to good use in fighting the
very monsters who had made us what we were. Trained by the Church to hunt down and kill
vampires, we had members in every country across the world. Indeed, it seemed that almost every
religion in the world had their own version of Hunters, used to fight the vampires, ghouls and other
demonic creatures who had been around since Lucifer and his followers were cast out of heaven.
I had been really fortunate in getting the legendary Theo Conway as my partner when I finished
my training. He was an American like me and had his own stories of an attack long ago, which he
rarely discussed. He was a half-blood, like me, as he also had been very nearly killed by the
vampires who’d attacked him. I’d learned a lot from him when I’d first been assigned to him as his
partner some ten years ago.
We’d both had nearly all the blood in our body exchanged over time, so we were fundamentally
changed, with no way of going back to what we used to be. If we hadn’t been as we were, it would
have been impossible to fight the vampires and hope for any kind of positive outcome.
Dylan Malone was like us in some ways—but unlike us, he was now more vampire than human
and devolving every day. The treatment the monks had managed to give him had probably helped him
a bit so far, but it was only a matter of time until he became a full-blood. He could still pass as
human, though as time went on, he would grow more and more monstrous. We had to find him.
 Chapter Two

Jace O’Neal

Thank God it was Friday. It was one of the few things that kept me from losing it when John
Atkins, sales manager of Everest Enterprises, Inc, leaned over my desk, and blasted his dragon breath
right in my face over a design I was supposed to have to a customer the day before.
“Can you give me one reason why Golden Pet Foods advertising department was blowing up my
phone first thing this morning about the designs you were supposed to have to them yesterday?
Yesterday, O’Neal. If you can’t do your job, just say so, and I’ll assign someone who can, damn it. I
knew it was a mistake to trust you with this campaign for Golden—I tried to warn them about you, but
they wouldn’t listen.”
“I can do the job, sir,” I said, working hard to keep any hint of emotion out of my voice. “There
was a delay in receiving one of the designs for the posters from the art department. I talked to the
head of their advertising department personally about this yesterday afternoon and explained the
situation. He said he understood; it was no problem and that he would get the message to his ad guys.
There must have been a miscommunication.”
“Oh, there was a miscommunication, all right,” Atkins continued to rant. By this time, he had
attracted the attention of most of my coworkers in the other tiny cubicles around me. Some of them—
the nicer ones—gave me sympathetic glances and pretended not to pay attention. The others made no
effort to hide their delight. When I got this plum assignment over some of these more experienced
employees, there had been plenty of hard feelings to go around.
I shifted my attention back to John, who was still in the process of chewing my ass out.
“The ‘miscommunication’ occurred when I agreed to let you handle this project in the first
place.” Like he had much choice in the matter. Golden had asked for me personally and threatened to
pull out when Atkins tried to foist someone else on him. Atkins glared down at me one more time for
good measure and pointed a bony finger in my face. “Get your shit together, O’Neal, or you’ll be out
on your ass.” He straightened back up and stormed back to his office.
I had worked with Golden Pet Foods, an Atlanta based company, back in New York City on an
ad campaign. When their CEO found out I was back home in Atlanta, he’d asked for me personally to
handle his new campaign to introduce his product to local distributors.
I hated my job—I never said I wasn’t damn good at it.
 I tore my eyes away from John Atkins’ retreating back and sublimated my fantasies of grabbing
him in a headlock and wrestling his fat ass to the floor by taking a huge bite of the jelly doughnut I had
on my desk. I glanced over at the grinning face of the guy who sat in the cubicle beside me, Chris
Bennett.
“Man, he tore you a new one, huh?” he said. “Better watch yourself, Jace. We all know how
much he hates you. One of these days when he’s talking to you, his head’s just going to explode.”
“I should be so lucky,” I mumbled around the doughnut in my mouth, and turned my back on him. I
didn’t have time for Chris’s shit, and I sure as hell didn’t have the patience.
It hadn’t always been like this. I hadn’t always dreaded every workday. Once upon a time I lived
in New York City and loved what I did for a living, looking forward to going to work every day.
Once my life had been exciting and full of promise, and I had actually enjoyed my coworkers. Back
then, I had a future I was really looking forward to. I was going places—everyone said so—and then
my life blew up.
I ran from New York City after everything that happened there and came back home to find a job
in Atlanta. Not right away, of course. I limped along for another month after the incident that had
almost destroyed me, so depressed and humiliated I could barely drag my ass out of bed each
morning. I pretended not to notice the sidelong glances or hear the whispers of my New York
coworkers. I tried not to care that I was no longer being greeted in the hallways by my bosses. I
attempted to be nice when another guy got the promotion that should have been mine. But in the end, I
finally admitted to myself that the handwriting on the wall was spelling out my name. My New York
City dream was over.
After I returned to Atlanta, I got a job pretty quickly. Actually, I was surprised to be headhunted
aggressively by Suzanne Tate, a nice, middle-aged lady, who was now my supervisor at Everest
Enterprises. It wasn’t as prestigious or even the same kind of advertising, of course—those top
companies were mostly back in New York or Chicago. The position was in sales promotions, which
wasn’t the same thing at all, but the best I could find on short notice.
It wasn’t nearly as much money either, but it was a good offer, the best I’d had so far, and since I
needed a job right away, I took it. I would have come home sooner if I hadn’t been so involved with
Dylan Malone and hadn’t been practically ignoring the fucking disaster that had been happening at
home right alongside my own calamity in New York.
My head was aching, probably from the restless night I’d had the night before, full of bad dreams.
Nightmares, really, about someone outside my window, tapping on the glass.

In the dream, I rose from my bed and went out to him where he stood in the shadows under the
trees. It was Dylan, looking like he did the first time I ever saw him at that party in New York City.
So sinfully handsome, his eyes glowing at me and a warm, gentle smile on his lips. He murmured
my name and pulled me to him, taking my hand to lead me farther into the shadows under the trees.
The next thing I knew, in that crazy way that nightmares change so suddenly, we were lying naked
in bed back in my old apartment in New York City, and the sheer, white curtains at the windows
were fluttering in the summer breeze coming in the window.
How did we get there? Had the last few months only been a dream? Or was this the dream? I
couldn’t remember what had happened and why I was here like this with Dylan, but I didn’t want
this bliss to end. Not ever. Dylan cupped my face in his hand and brushed his lips over mine. His
lips trailed down to my throat and I felt his teeth sink into my flesh, but it didn’t hurt. I felt the
pleasure surge through me and moaned his name, pulling him closer, like I was trying to climb
inside him, trying to merge my body with his so we could be one flesh.
“I’ve missed you, Dylan,” I moaned. “I’ve been so lost without you.”
“Shh,” he whispered, his cool lips a balm against my hot skin. “I’m here now, my love, and
soon we’ll be together forever. Be patient only a little while longer.”
He bit down on my neck again, and everything became a blur of passion and pain. His kiss
was lighting me up, branding me with his desire. I felt as if I were on fire, and I wanted him more
than I’d ever wanted anything in my life. I was naked in his arms at last, and he pushed me back
against the pillows, cradling my face in one hand as he stroked me with the other. I felt the orgasm
building inside me until I thought I’d explode.
“Make love to me,” I begged him, desperate for him, and he smiled as he slid over me, his
knee parting my thighs.
He surged and thrust inside me over and over and rocked his body into mine, taking all of me,
taking everything I was or ever would be. I could feel the orgasm building, the white-hot pleasure
overwhelming me, crushing me, crashing into my body until I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. My
orgasm swept over me, and he moaned with satisfaction as he pulled out of me to bend over and
suck down every drop of my come. His mouth was so hot, it burned my skin, and I screamed and
thrashed my head to get him to stop, but he wouldn’t stop. He’d never stop.
I awoke from the dream drenched in sweat, my thighs still sticky. Had I come in my sleep? I
hadn’t done that since I was a teenager. I wanted to get up and clean myself, but I was too weak,
too tired. I moaned and rolled over on my stomach, falling back into my dreams, where Dylan made
love to me over and over again the whole night through.

In the morning, he was gone, of course, and I realized it had only been a dream. What else could
it have been? But still, I went outside to look for him before I left for work. I remembered I had been
awakened around midnight by the dog next door who had been barking his head off at something in my
yard, near the old shed. His barking had been so frantic and so over the top, that I had started to go
outside to check the yard, but before I could, I was suddenly seized by a nameless terror. Something
told me there was danger out there, and I’d shrunk back away from the window and quickly closed the
curtains.
The next morning, everything looked intact inside the shed, not that I would have noticed much in
all the chaos. The things my dad used to take care of the yard with were about all we ever kept in
there, and he’d never taken great care of his tools. I’d inherited his disinterest and decided lack of
handyman skills. There had been a faint, odd smell like something dead, and I’d wondered if a mouse
had gotten in and died inside the walls.
Standing there in the yard for a moment before I left for work, I had superstitiously gazed into the
shadows under the thick stand of trees at the back of the yard. They’d reminded me of my dreams from
the night before that had seemed so real. I’d felt as if I’d really been with Dylan out here, in my
dreams at least, and then, in the way of dreams, somehow transported back to my old apartment in
New York City.
I hadn’t slept well for the last few months, and it wasn’t the first time I’d awakened to find
myself disoriented and confused, feeling like something had happened to me in a dream—something I
needed to remember, but it escaped me when I tried too hard to concentrate.
I’d even awakened a week or so ago to find myself outside in the backyard, barefoot and dressed
only in pajama pants. Shivering with the early morning chill, I’d taken off back into the house, but I’d
been alarmed. I had never sleepwalked before. If it continued, I’d need to see a doctor about it. Even
though racking up even more bills was the last thing in the world I needed.
I wished things would go back to the way they used to be, back when my dad was still alive, and
I was living my dream in New York City. Back before everything changed. Before catastrophe struck.
Before Dylan.
 Chapter Three

By five o’clock that afternoon at work, I was exhausted, but I had to work late to finish the
Golden project. My sleep had been disturbed the night before by those nightmares about Dylan and
those vague, but alarming noises in the backyard, so I felt drained and tired. I felt that way a lot lately.
Thinking maybe coffee would help my headache and keep me awake, I got up from my desk and
trudged down to the break room to brew a fresh pot.
As I stood there waiting for it to be ready, I realized I should call Mrs. Anderson and explain that
I’d be late coming home to see if she minded staying over. I’d meant to do it earlier, and I couldn’t
believe I’d forgotten. My brain was like a sieve lately. No wonder I was always in trouble at work.
May Anderson, whose real name was Mei-xing, had always been a good friend to our family.
She’d raised her daughter all by herself in the small, aging house next to ours, after her former
husband who had done something in the Diplomatic Service in China and had up and left her high and
dry in a foreign country, where she barely spoke the language. She was tough and resilient, and I
employed her as a part-time sitter for my brother. Like ours, her house was one of the few in our
neighborhood that hadn’t been updated and remodeled, but she kept it scrupulously clean, and her
lawn was always immaculate.
She was one of the few sitters Tyler liked, because she was good to him, and because she gave
him free rein over the TV. He had his entire day mapped out by the shows he had to watch, like Wheel
of Fortune, Jeopardy and his absolute favorite game show, Family Feud, with Steve Harvey. If he
didn’t get to see them, we all suffered in one way or the other.
I sighed and shook myself for daydreaming there by the coffee pot, when I should have gone back
to work. I quickly texted May that I’d be late, and then I poured myself a cup of coffee and started
back to my desk. The empty halls were spooky and to top it off, today happened to be October thirty-
first, or Halloween, an observance of the time in the liturgical calendar dedicated to remembering the
dead and celebrating the supernatural.
Oddly appropriate, considering the fact that I’d be dead in the water if I didn’t pull this pet food
project off before midnight. Atkins hated me and was not going to let an opportunity to get rid of me
pass him by.
Uncomfortable, I pulled at the collar of the costume I was wearing and wished again I’d taken
my co-workers’ advice and gone earlier to the costume store. Suzanne, my immediate supervisor, had
thought it would be “great fun” for all of us in the office to dress up, and I had finally capitulated and
dressed like Jason from the Halloween movies. Unimaginative, but I had little choice. Because I’d
waited too late to get a costume, it was literally the only one left in the store.
The costume consisted of cheap, ill-fitting black clothing along with a disreputable camo jacket,
a plastic machete and a white mask. I couldn’t very well wear the mask in the office all day, so I had
stuck it inside a drawer in my desk alongside the plastic machete that morning.
The upshot was that no one could even guess who I was. I just looked like a badly dressed
homeless person, maybe looking to pick up some odd jobs in lawn care with my machete.
After a long day in the damn costume, I was ready to turn in my mask and my machete and go
home, but that didn’t mean it was going to happen. Not tonight, because of the project I had to finish. I
had heaved a sigh as most of my coworkers made a mad stampede to the door at five o’clock.
What was it Drew Carey said? “Oh, you hate your job? Why didn’t you say so? There’s a support
group for that. It’s called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar.”
I took a long sip of coffee and pulled up the Golden pet foods file on my computer. If the launch
went well, that corner cubicle I’d had my eye on for a while could be mine. It wasn’t the same as an
office, of course, but that space would still be better than what I had now.
Claustrophobically small, my own little area was jammed up against a window that let in heat in
the summer and cold breezes in the winter. The window was currently festooned with sticky notes
reminding me of this appointment and that deadline. The notes were supposed to remind me of things I
needed to do, but because I was also cursed with a truly bad memory, or I had been since I’d returned
from New York. I often forgot to take a look at the damn notes, though, a kind of running joke around
the office with my cubicle mates. My shortcomings weren’t quite as amusing to my supervisors.
Suzanne had told me as much earlier that day at lunch.

“Jace, you’ve got to get more organized,” she said as she unpacked a chef salad from her
lunch bag, along with enough crackers and croutons to feed most of the people in the break room.
“Seriously, we’re all beginning to wonder what’s up with you. I hate to bring this up, but since you
broke up with your handsome boyfriend, you’ve not been yourself.”
I chose to ignore that last comment and took out a huge slice of cold, greasy, delicious
pepperoni pizza and a Diet Coke from my bag. I was tempted by the chocolate birthday cake that
someone had left out on the table, but I saw Suzanne eyeing my lunch with both disdain and envy,
so I decided to forego dessert so as not to antagonize her any more than she already was.
“It has only been a few weeks.”
“It seems longer. You two seem to have such a volatile relationship, it’s been hard to keep
up.”
I rolled my eyes but refrained from comment. Sometimes that was the best way to handle
Suzanne, who could be intrusive and nosy about my personal life. I took another bite of pizza and
she sighed.
“Really, I don’t see how you can eat like that every day and look the way you do. It’s going to
catch up to you someday. And why do you even bother with the Diet Coke?”
I shrugged as I took another bite. “You cut down where you can.”
She shook her head in disgust. “If I ate half that much for lunch, I’d weigh three hundred
pounds. Where in the world do you get that kind of metabolism?”
I took another huge bite and shrugged. “I don’t know, but I thank God for it, especially on
days like these. I need the extra energy.”
Suzanne picked at her salad and relentlessly returned to unpleasant subjects. “You know that
John told me he didn’t really trust you to get it together enough to handle this launch for Golden?
Not a good sign, Jace. Not good at all.”
“John’s an asshole,” I said belligerently, but in a really soft voice as I glanced around to
make sure no one else was listening. “I don’t know how you stand to work with him,” I said, on a
roll now. “If I had to work directly under him, I’d have killed myself a long time ago.” I took a
gulp of soda and let my eyes stray longingly back to the cake. It called to me in a dark, siren’s
voice.
“You need to find a way to get along with him,” she said. “And if the breakup with your
boyfriend is causing all this, maybe you should think about getting back together with him.”

Suzanne didn’t have a clue as to what she was talking about, but she’d never let that stop her
before. After I had fled New York City, Dylan had found me again within six months. I’d always taken
great pains not to mention where my parents lived or given him any personal information about
myself, but he somehow found out. I had claimed my childhood had been difficult and I wanted to
forget it. He’d never seemed interested in the least. Since he was totally self-absorbed and loved the
idea that I belonged only to him, he never pursued any of my history much, and never asked questions.
He had seemed to accept it at face value.
Why had I lied about my perfectly normal childhood? I didn’t know. Some sense of self-
preservation, maybe, because right from the very beginning, I’d been scared of him, though I didn’t
like to admit it. I was also fascinated, enthralled and obsessed by him—all of those things. And yet
only a few days into the relationship, I realized there was something about him that simply terrified
me. Something I couldn’t really name or put my finger on. Whenever I tried, my thoughts became
jumbled and confused.
On the one hand, I was terribly lonely for Dylan after I left New York to come home, and I’d
pined for him. And no matter how crazy that made me seem, even to myself after all that had happened
between us, I couldn’t shake the feeling. It had been hard to give up my dreams of him and the future
we might have had together, but I told myself I was seriously messed up for even thinking that way
after what he’d done to me.
Then in March, a few months after I’d run back home, I received a text from him telling me he
knew where I was, and he’d be seeing me soon. I took it as more of a threat than a promise.
I was shocked when I’d gotten his message, asking me if I really believed I could get away from
him so easily. Despite his lies and his cheating and the constant manipulations, when he arrived in
Atlanta two months later, he came to see me and begged me for another chance. And God help me, I
gave him one.
I’d resisted at first. Or at least I tried to. I’d told him I’d given him way too many chances
already, and that he would never change. I said it would never work between us after all that
happened in New York City, and I thought it was best if we didn’t see each other again.
He’d simply refused to accept it. He’d kept showing up like a bad penny at my door, cajoling and
pleading until I finally gave in and agreed to give him one more chance. That’s the kind of rock I was
when it came to Dylan Malone.
We still fought over everything. He was terribly possessive and resented the time I spent with my
family. I had finally decided in the fall, after another terrible fight, that I couldn’t do this dance with
him any longer. It was simply taking too much out of me, and my health was suffering. I hadn’t been
sleeping well, and I had little energy. I was having terrible dreams that I could never remember the
next morning. Then there was the sleepwalking thing, and people constantly commenting on how much
weight I’d lost and how listless and pale I seemed. I had body aches that had begun shortly after
Dylan came to Atlanta. My doctor said it was possibly fibromyalgia and blood tests also showed that
I was also badly anemic. I’d been prescribed iron pills, vitamins and more rest, but so far, none of it
seemed to help.
When I broke up with Dylan, he only smiled.
He was right in what he had no doubt been thinking. We couldn’t stay away from each other. That
short breakup had gone about as well as the others, which is to say, not at all. He still came around
whenever he wanted to, and we argued constantly. I hardly even remembered the last fight, except to
know that Dylan had been viciously angry and threatening, and he told me at one point that he’d never
let me go. I knew I should have had my head examined for carrying on with all of this as long as I had.
I had to get my head back into my job and my family and do everything I could to forget all about
Dylan Malone.
He had been abusive to me, and he’d cheated on me in New York, and yet when he showed up
unexpectedly at my door, as recently as two days ago, I let him in. I hated myself for it. He was wrong
for me in every possible way, but I couldn’t seem to say no to him.
I was a month behind on the mortgage, and constantly dodging calls from the bank and assorted
bill collectors, so I couldn’t afford to fuck up this project at work and give John Atkins any excuse to
get rid of me. So many things occupied my mind these days, so many responsibilities piling up on top
of me, that things like work had taken a back seat.
I sighed, deciding I needed to stop woolgathering and get back to work.
But before I could even sit back down with my coffee, my cell phone rang and I answered with
dread when I saw it was the sitter, our neighbor Mrs. Anderson. She must have gotten my text. I didn’t
know exactly why she was calling, but it probably wasn’t for anything good. The first words out of
her mouth confirmed that suspicion.
“Jace, I sorry, but I no can stay late tonight. My daughter, Maria, she in labor. She call me and say
I need go pick her up and take her to hospital.”
Mrs. Anderson’s English wasn’t great, even after all these years, but she was a godsend to my
family. Tyler, my little brother, wasn’t always easy to handle, but from the first, she’d had no
problems with him.
“Oh no, of course, Mrs. Anderson. I’ll be right home.”
“First baby for her, so maybe no big rush, but…”
“It’s okay. I’ll work something out. Let me make some calls.”
Cursing under my breath at the unfortunate timing, I shut down my computer and started
frantically searching through my contacts for the number of another sitter I used sometimes in
emergencies. He was good, but an hour away, so I had to pay him not only for his time but also his
gas. Still, my brother was difficult and not everyone would stay with him.
Thankfully, I was able to reach the man, and he agreed to meet me at my house in an hour or so. I
knew Mrs. Anderson would have given Tyler and my mom their dinner already, so at least I didn’t
have to worry about going through a drive-through on the way home.
I figured I could check in on my mother, make sure Tyler was settled and then change out of this
hot costume before I headed back to the office. My mom was no match for Tyler if he got in one of his
moods. When I’d first come home and gone to bring him back from the state mental hospital in
Milledgeville, Tyler and I had spent the night in a motel. He’d gotten upset over not being able to find
a TV program he wanted to watch on the motel cable, and there had been an unfortunate incident
resulting in a bill to replace the TV. After one of Tyler’s meltdowns, it had a hole in the screen the
exact size of the TV remote. I also had to pay for a visit to Urgent Care for a sprained wrist. Tyler
hadn’t meant to hurt me—but he took after my dad and was a big boy. He just didn’t know his own
strength.
Stepping out into the wide corridor of our building, I hurried down to the elevator to get to the
parking deck in the basement. My office shared the floor of the building with a doctor’s group,
Midtown Internal Medicine, and they always seemed to have a lot of geriatric patients in and out
every day. They had clinic hours until seven, so since it was only a little after five, there was still a
lot of traffic in the halls as I left. I had picked up my briefcase as I left the office by force of habit,
and as I dodged around an old lady who was taking her time strolling down the hallway, some guy
with an armload of boxes shoved into me and spun me right into the path of the little, whitehaired, old
lady.
She squawked in alarm and swung her cane up at my head, which made me instinctively fling up
my arm to dodge the blow. When I did, I hit her a glancing blow on the chest, and she windmilled her
arms and toppled backward. Horrified, I leaped to catch her, but we both fell to the floor in a
spectacular sprawl. I managed to turn to take the brunt of the fall, but the old lady was frightened out
of her wits. She also got mad as hell, thinking, I guess, that she was being attacked. She began
screaming at the top of her lungs and punched me right in the eye.
I scrambled to my feet, deciding it was past time to make a strategic exit and threw abject
apologies over my shoulder at her as I limped down to the elevator. I jumped inside just as the doors
were closing and a few minutes later I was sliding into the front seat of my mom’s old Buick, headed
toward the east side and my mother’s house in Cabbagetown, an older neighborhood on the east side
of Atlanta which, a hundred years or more ago, had been the home of a mill that made cotton bags for
packaging.
The mill was long gone, the building once housing it having been turned into expensive lofts. Our
house was originally part of the little village that had been built around the old mill, so it was a
typical cottage style, but not renovated, like some of the others in the old historic district. The land it
sat on was valuable, I guess, but my mother would never sell the house, no matter what. She’d lost a
lot in her life already after my dad died, and I wanted to save her home for her if I could.
By the time I pulled up in our driveway, I was sweating like a pig. The air conditioning inside the
office was good, so the camo jacket hadn’t felt too awful inside the building, but now that I was
outside, I was roasting, and I had one of my headaches coming on, along with a real shiner. My eye
was swelling up nicely where the sweet, little old lady had really nailed me with one hell of a right
hook. Once in the house, I could pop a couple of extra strength aspirin.
Mrs. Anderson took off as soon as I arrived, having no time to waste on idle chitchat with the
likes of me. After checking in on my mom, who was napping, I went into the living room where I
could hear Steve Harvey’s voice drifting down the hallway. I figured Tyler would barely even
acknowledge me when one of his idols was on, but I felt better just checking in on him for a minute. I
saw him standing in front of the TV, rocking back and forth, like he usually did for the entire thirty-
minute show.
“Hey, buddy!” I called to him. “I have to go back to work, but I’ll be home as soon as I can. Mr.
Bannister is staying with you, okay?” I was surprised when he spared me a quick glance and a sweet
smile—a special mark of favor while his favorite show was on—before totally focusing back in on
Steve.
Because I was hot and still sweating like fat Elvis, I decided to take a quick shower and change
clothes before going back out in the heat again. Even though it was almost the first of November, we’d
been having unseasonably warm weather, and the temperature had been hovering in the high seventies.
I sprayed myself liberally with deodorant after my shower, doused myself with cologne and got
dressed in something cooler before going over to stand in front of the fan. It was mostly blowing
warm air at the moment, but it was better than nothing. At least marginally.
Before I left again, I went into the bathroom to straighten my hair, which was silky fine, and
refused to cooperate much with anything I did for it. I’d been told plenty of times in my life that I
looked good, but I wasn’t conceited about it. I knew it was only an accident of genetics, a lucky
break. Unlike the unlucky one—the fucking disaster—that had caused my little brother Tyler to be
born with Fragile X syndrome. A roll of the dice and I got lucky, while Tyler got snake eyes. There
were a lot of theories about the syndrome, and one of them was that the genetics were passed on to
daughters who may or may not be affected. But their children were, at a rate of about fifty percent. I
was in the fortunate percentage.
It wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair, but after a while the rage I felt over it just became a part of me,
like it was the only way I knew how to handle the grief. I wondered sometimes if that kind of anger
was the real reason behind Tyler’s outbursts. If, maybe he was just so goddamned furious about the
raw deal fate had handed him that it just exploded out of him sometimes without warning. Like he was
working up to some supernova event, some dramatic and catastrophic destruction that would be
marked by one final, titanic explosion that would finally destroy us all.
I went over to my closet to find something to wear. I loved men’s fashion and dressing well. And
though I couldn’t afford it now, the fact that I could only worship it from afar didn’t take away from
my adoration. Total obsession wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, after all.
Then I thought of Dylan and changed my mind with a little frisson of unease. A cold chill hit me
out of nowhere like it always did when he came to mind, and I got a full body shiver.
 The doorbell rang, and I went gratefully to the door to let in the emergency sitter. I got him settled
and finally left to go back to my office. Because of the insane traffic, it took me longer than usual to
get back downtown, and I arrived back at my building in midtown much later than I’d planned to. It
was almost eight, and I still had a solid three hours of work to do on the pet food designs.
The car park was silent as a tomb when I stepped out of my car and onto the concrete deck. Not a
great analogy to make on All Hallows Eve when the veil between this world and the next was
particularly thin, according to the all the ghost shows on TV. Also, one hell of a time to think about it
when I had to walk across that deck all alone in the dark.
Most of the people who parked there in the deck were office workers in the area, like me, so they
were already gone for the day, and the place was both dark and deserted. It wasn’t even Daylight
Saving Time yet, but all day it had been cloudy and muggy, and it seemed darker than usual for this
time of evening. Everything was a little spooky, and the one light at the far end of the parking deck just
wasn’t hacking it. I thought I heard soft footsteps behind me at one point, but when I turned around to
look, there was no one there. Just nerves, I told myself, but I walked a little faster just the same.
Shaking off the jittery feeling I was having, I entered the building, using the keypad on the side
door to let myself in. In an effort to cut down on rising energy costs, our building had timers and
dimmers to greatly soften overhead lights once people had mostly gone home for the evening, and I
had the place pretty much to myself tonight.
I made my way through the shadowy lobby and upstairs to my floor. Once I stepped off the
elevator, I heard the sound of a door closing somewhere down the hall, and I stopped and gazed
around nervously, but I didn’t see anyone.
Figuring it was probably just the cleaning crew, I went down the corridor to my office and let
myself in, using a keypad again. The building’s owner had installed these a year or so before and they
were convenient if you could remember the code. Thank God I did, but it was never a sure thing. With
my memory being what it was, I’d had to write it down and keep it on a slip of paper in my wallet. I
usually remembered, but I liked the comfort of knowing I had it written down, just like all my
computer passwords that I kept in a little notebook on my desk.
Sighing, I settled down and went to work. The designs I’d finally gotten from the art department
late that afternoon were good, and pretty soon I was immersed in tweaking them for the store
displays, making sure they were just the way Golden wanted them. After that, I moved onto finalizing
plans for getting the coupons and special offer displays to the stores, and by the time I finally had
everything finished and the portfolio neatly packaged and sent off, it was almost eleven. I turned off
my computer and sat there in the dim light. It was then that I had the eerie feeling that someone was
watching me. And it felt as if they had been for a long time.
 I tried to remind myself not to let my imagination run away with me, but I thought—I was almost
sure—I could hear someone breathing not too far away.
A feeling of great lethargy began to come over me, and I put my head down on my desk. I was so
tired. I thought I’d stay there for just a moment until I could gather my strength again to get up and go
outside. But I began to sink into a dream. Lemon yellow moonlight was shining through my cubicle
window, though it was soft and faint. In that dim light I could see the street below, but it was wrapped
in velvety blackness. Still, I knew someone was waiting for me there. I realized the window was
somehow open, and I climbed out of it and drifted down toward the street like a wisp of smoke. I was
anxious to reach it, and yet terrified of doing so at the same time. Whatever was there meant me harm,
but I couldn’t resist. I drifted closer and closer to the one who waited for me and then he rushed
toward me and enveloped me in his arms. I felt a sharp pain in my neck as he held me close, and then
I knew no more.
After a long while, I began to be aware of my surroundings again, though my head ached and
even my vision was blurry. I was in my office, of course. I stumbled down to the restroom to splash
cold water on my face and was surprised at how weak I felt. I stood for a long moment at the sink,
trying to gather my strength to navigate the dark parking deck. I knew it must be really late.
My old car was the only one left in the lot when I finally got there, and I lost no time in getting
into it and heading back home. I kept the window rolled down to let the cool air in all the way,
because I feared falling asleep behind the wheel. I wanted to be in my bed by midnight, but it was
Halloween, not to mention a Friday night, so I didn’t hold out too much hope. Considering how bad
the traffic was in Atlanta on an ordinary night, I knew I’d be late getting home. Luckily the next
morning was Saturday, so I could sleep in. At least until Tyler got up anyway. A good thing, because I
knew I wouldn’t get home much before the witching hour, if then.
I wondered what had been wrong with me tonight. I couldn’t believe I’d fallen asleep at my desk.
I must have been more exhausted than I thought. Maybe I should go back and see my doctor again.
The witching hour was long past when I finally arrived back home. The name gave me an odd
little chill. It was the time when all manner of demons and wicked creatures were thought to be at
their most powerful, but I didn’t really believe in all that. I had always thought of the term as meaning
more like a time of bad luck, a time in which evil beings had a greater likelihood of coming near. I
sincerely hoped not. I couldn’t handle much more bad luck coming my way.
 Chapter Four

Atlanta homicide detectives wore fedora hats, or that’s what I thought I’d read somewhere
anyway. There had been an article a while back about them in the Atlanta Journal Sunday supplement.
Usually the hats were black, or sometimes brown—almost always they were made of fine, soft fur
felt. They had been a tradition in Atlanta for decades and the hats were made by famous companies
like Stetson, Biltmore, Dobbs and other names that had long been around as institutions of
haberdashery and badassery. I had always admired hats and wondered why men stopped wearing
them so much, because they looked really good.
I never thought I’d see them or their owners at my front door at such an early hour on a Saturday
morning, though.
The two men who had hammered on my door just after eight o’clock identified themselves with a
flash of a badge that I didn’t really get a good look at. I was pretty sure they were with the police,
however, both because of the hats and suits, and because neither of them corrected me when I called
them detectives.
“Mr. O’Neal, can we come in, please?” one of them asked in a deep voice, when I couldn’t seem
to do much more than stand there and blink at him and the other guy. “We have some questions we’d
like to ask you about a friend of yours—Dylan Malone.”
“Dylan? Why? Is he in some kind of trouble?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out, sir. If you wouldn’t mind letting us come in?”
I stepped back and the broad-shouldered men filled up the foyer until it was hard to breathe. I
stuck my hands in the pockets of my robe, because I was inexplicably nervous. I had no idea why,
except I’d had bad experiences with cops in the not-so-distant past, and detectives so early in the
morning couldn’t be a good thing.
I tipped my head toward the living room, and they followed me in. I gestured for them to sit
down. We were in luck because the living room was Tyler’s domain. It wasn’t yet time for any of his
shows, though, so we should be okay. He’d be in bed at this hour on a Saturday, sound asleep.
I asked if they wanted coffee, but they shook their heads.
“No thanks,” the younger one said, looking me up and down pointedly.
“My name is Will Logan, and this is my partner, Theo Conway. We have a few questions and then
we’ll be out of your way.
 Logan was a little younger than the other detective, with eyes like chips of ice. They were the
palest blue, and cold, like I imagined a serial killer’s eyes might be. His suit was black, off-the-rack
and a little too tight across his shoulders. For some reason, the suit looked out of place on him, like it
wasn’t what he usually wore, but I didn’t know why I thought so. His hat was black too, and it had a
slightly broader brim than his partner’s, like the one Indiana Jones used to wear in those movies. I
also noticed he was gorgeous, because how could I not?
The slightly older one, whose name he said was Conway, was maybe thirty-four or five,
muscular and really good looking. In fact, both were so handsome, they looked like actors hired to
play cops. Conway had one of those deep voices, rich and dark like molasses. He was wearing a
sharp, navy-blue suit, a silk tie and a pocket square. His hat was a blue fedora and he looked damn
good in it. He also had a gruff and cold manner, or he seemed to when he spoke to me, anyway.
The younger detective’s stern gaze traveled down to my feet and back up to my chest, partially
exposed in the robe that wasn’t tied well enough and was gapping open a bit. I usually wore shirts
with long sleeves to hide the bruises on my chest and my arms. Most—though not all—had been
inflicted by Tyler when he got agitated, and this latest batch had been courtesy of me trying to foist
Honey Nut Cheerios on him instead of his favorite Fruity Pebbles, because I had forgotten to go to the
grocery store on the way home from work a couple of days earlier.
It was my own fault, and I didn’t blame Tyler. At fourteen, he was a big boy, and he didn’t know
his own strength, that’s all. It didn’t help that I took after my mother’s side of the family and didn’t
have what you might call a large frame at only five feet seven and a hundred and forty-five pounds.
Mistakenly I had thought a hug might calm him down. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
At the state hospital, they called the cocktail of antipsychotics they gave him to calm his agitation
a B52, after an eight-engine heavy bomber used by the military. The aircraft, like the cocktail, was
called a BUFF, or a big, ugly fucker, like the combination of Haldol, Ativan, and Benadryl that
knocked Tyler on his ass for hours after they gave it to him. Once I returned from New York and found
out exactly what kind of ward Tyler was on and what was happening to him, I had vowed that he’d
never take drugs like that again, no matter what kind of abuse I had to endure personally to calm him
down, and mostly it was working.
Since I’d had him home, the tantrums were getting much fewer and farther between, and I was
proud of that.
“Have you been in an accident, Mr. O’Neal? Some kind of fight?”
I glanced down at my chest and then folded my robe over it more securely. I was sure they
noticed the black eye the old lady had given me too. It would be pretty hard to miss.
“Not exactly,” I said, and they looked at me expectantly, like they were waiting for me to
elaborate. When I didn’t say anything more, they just kept staring at me. Hoping to make me
uncomfortable, I guess. If that were the case, it was working.
“Excuse me, but what is this about? Is Dylan in some kind of trouble?”
“Why would you ask that, Mr. O’Neal? Have you heard from Mr. Malone?”
“I…no, it’s just that I wouldn’t be surprised. Dylan’s so…” I let the words trail off, because I
didn’t know exactly what I meant to say. “What is it this time?” I said, instead.
They glanced at each other and then back at me. “He’s missing,” Detective Conway said.
I looked back and forth between them blankly. “Missing? What do you mean by missing?”
“Gone. Disappeared,” Detective Logan put in, his tone sharp and impatient. “He hasn’t shown up
at any of his friends’ houses or at work or at any of his usual hangouts and none of his friends know
where he is. None of them have seen or talked to him since yesterday.”
“B-but I don’t understand. I mean, just since yesterday? That’s not so long, surely. Not for Dylan.
Wait a minute... Aren’t you homicide detectives? What exactly is going on? Tell me, please!”

****

Will Logan

I looked O’Neal up and down and shifted my weight in my uncomfortable seat on the lumpy sofa.
He must have been sound asleep when he’d heard us knock, because he was still barefoot and dressed
only in a pair of pajamas pants he must have thrown on to answer the door, along with a ratty old robe
that looked like he’d had it for years. He had small feet, like the rest of him, except for a noticeable
bulge at his groin in the thin clothing. Nothing little about that. He also had some serious bedhead
going on with all that blond hair sticking up every which way, and he needed a shave. He looked
grouchy and sleepy and out of sorts. I’d never seen anyone so fucking gorgeous in my life, and I
couldn’t stop staring at him. He reminded me of Brad Pitt in that old movie where Pitt had played
Death taking a holiday or whatever. Just impossibly young and way too pretty, even bruised up like he
was.
Those bruises were part of why we were here. If anyone might know the whereabouts of Malone,
it would be his favorite thrall. He’d skipped out on us, which meant he probably had been a part of
that nest in the nearby small town. Once alerted to our presence, he had staged his own
disappearance. Our plan was to sweat his location out of Jace O’Neal if we could. He obviously
thought we were some kind of detectives, so we’d roll with that.
“Actually,” I said, “we don’t know what’s happened to him, if anything,” I said, ruthlessly
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 It was at the outset of this campaign that Jomini handed in to
Marshal Ney, his chief, a paper showing what Napoleon must
necessarily do if he would beat the Prussians and cut them off from
their approaching allies. He alone had divined the strategic secrets
of the Emperor.
In this campaign we plainly see the growth of risk commensurate
within the magnitude of plan, but we also recognize the greater
perfection of general intuitions, the larger plan and method. Details
had to be overlooked, but the whole army was held in the Emperor’s
hand like a battalion in that of a good field officer. In forty-eight hours
his two hundred thousand men could be concentrated at any one
point. And the very essence of the art of war is to know when you
may divide, to impose on the enemy, subsist, pursue, deceive, and
to know how to divide so that you may concentrate before battle can
occur.
 JENA CAMPAIGN
Again Napoleon had carried out his principle of moving on one
line in one mass on the enemy, and a few great soldiers began to
see that there was a theory in this. Jomini first grasped its full
meaning and showed that only battle crowns the work. Without it a
general is merely uncovering his own communications. Victory is
essential to the success of such a plan. Napoleon pushed restlessly
in on the enemy. “While others are in council, the French army is on
the march,” quoth he.
In the Austerlitz and Jena campaigns, Napoleon’s manœuvre
was so admirably conceived that he kept open two lines of retreat,
which he could adapt to the enemy’s evolutions,—at Austerlitz via
Vienna and Bohemia, at Jena still more secure lines on the Rhine
and on the Main or Danube. This is a distinct mark of the perfection
of the plans.
The succeeding Friedland campaign has several items of
interest. At his first contact with the Russians, Napoleon, instead of
sticking to his uniform plan of one mass on one line, tried to surround
his enemy before he knew where the tactical decision of the
campaign would come. Result, a thrust in the air by one corps,
another did not reach the appointed place, a third met unexpected
and superior forces, and the enemy broke through the net. Napoleon
seemed to be experimenting. The captain of 1796, Ulm, Jena, is for
the moment unrecognizable.
The Russians attacked Napoleon in his winter-quarters, and the
bloody and indecisive battle of Eylau resulted, where for the first time
Napoleon met that astonishing doggedness of the Russian soldier,
on which Frederick had shattered his battalions at Kunersdorf. Later
came the victory of Friedland. Napoleon’s order for this day is a
model for study. Every important instruction for the battle is
embraced in the order; details are left to his lieutenants. Only the
time of launching the first attack is reserved to the chief. But the
strategy of the Friedland campaign was not so crisp. The true
manœuvre was to turn the Russian left, their strategic flank, and
throw them back on the sea. Napoleon turned their right to cut them
off from Königsberg. It was mere good luck that Friedland ended the
campaign. Even after defeat the enemy could have escaped.
In the Spanish campaign of the winter of 1807–8, Napoleon
reverted to his 1796 manœuvre of breaking the enemy’s centre. But
Napoleon had undertaken what could not be accomplished,—the
subjugation of Spain. His own strategy and the tactics of his
marshals were both brilliant and successful; he could have
compelled a peace, had such been the object. But to subdue a
people fanatically fighting for their homes, in a mountainous country,
is practically impossible by any means short of extermination. It was
in the political, not the military, task that Napoleon failed.
 While Napoleon was struggling in Spain, Austria deemed the
occasion good again to assert herself. This gave Napoleon an
opportunity of leaving to his lieutenants a game he already saw he
could not win, but in which he had achieved some brilliant openings,
and hurry to fields on which he felt a positive superiority. His army
and allies were already on the scene.
Berthier was in charge, and to him Napoleon had given full and
explicit instructions. But Berthier, though a good chief of staff, had no
power to grasp a strategic situation. By not obeying orders, he had,
by the time Napoleon arrived, muddled the problem, and instead of
concentrating behind the Lech, had got Davout’s corps pushed out to
Ratisbon, where it was liable to be cut off. Napoleon was in perilous
case. But by a beautiful and rapid series of manœuvres, in which he
cut the enemy in two, he wrought victory out of threatening defeat.
He was justly proud of this. “The greatest military manœuvres that I
have ever made, and on which I most flatter myself, took place at
Eckmühl, and were immensely superior to those of Marengo or other
actions which preceded or followed them.” It is the rapidity and
suddenness of these manœuvres which distinguished them from
1805. There was a regular plan. Here a constant series of surprises
and changes.
In making his plans, Napoleon never began by “What can the
enemy do?” but he first sought to place his army in the best position,
and then asked, “What now can the enemy do?” This gave him the
initiative. But his plan was always elastic enough to bend to what the
enemy might do. He never made plans colored by the enemy’s
possibilities. He chose his own plan intelligently, according to the
geography, topography, and existing conditions, and made it elastic
enough to be equal to the enemy’s. “The mind of a general should
be like the glass of a telescope in sharpness and clearness, and
never conjure up pictures.” The elasticity of Napoleon’s Eckmühl
plan is well shown by his ability to turn threatening disaster into
brilliant success.
During all these days, Napoleon was tremendously active. He
was personally at the important points. He hardly ate or slept. His
body was governed entirely by his will. The soldier of 1796 was
again afoot. But he was well and hearty. The lapse he now made is
all the more singular. The Archduke Charles had been beaten at
Eckmühl and was retiring into Ratisbon to cross the Danube;
Napoleon neglected to pursue. They say he was persuaded by his
marshals that the troops were too tired. For the first time in his life he
succumbed to an obstacle. “Genius consists in carrying out a plan
despite obstacles, and in finding few or no obstacles,” he once said.
Failure to pursue may come from the difficulty of leaving one’s
magazines, as in Frederick’s era, or because the captain is
exhausted, as well as the troops. But if the captain wants to pursue,
the troops can always do so. If the enemy can fly, the victor can
follow. Some part of the army is always in condition to march.
Jomini says that if Napoleon had here pursued like the Prussians
after Waterloo, it would have greatly modified the campaign. As it
was, the Archduke made good his escape. Napoleon had broken in
between the two wings of the Austrian army, but he had not crippled
the one before turning against the other. So that when he reached
Vienna on the heels of the left, he found ready to meet him the right
wing, which he ought to have crushed beyond so quick recovery at
Ratisbon. This failure to pursue is the first symptom of a habit which
from now on is more observably of not utilizing every advantage.
Then followed the crossing of the Danube at Lobau and the
battles around Aspern and Essling, which terminated with defeat and
great loss. The Archduke was on hand, received in overwhelming
numbers that part of the French army which crossed; the bridges
were broken behind the French; and a disastrous retreat to Lobau
followed.
Napoleon’s difficulties were growing apace with the size of his
armies, and he was now opposed by abler men. But it also seems as
if occasional fits of apathy or impatience of exertion were growing on
him. His splendid energy at Eckmühl did not continue. Details
received less personal attention. He was more rarely at the front. He
began to rely on the eyes of others more than, with his ancient vigor,
he would have done—despite his dictum that “a general who sees
through the eyes of others will never be in condition to command an
army as it should be commanded.” Until battle actually opened, he
lacked his old enthusiasm. After the first gun he was himself again.
But his method of conducting war was no longer so crisp as of yore.
He was more daring than careful; he relied on his luck, and strove to
cover errors of omission by stupendous blows. He was suffering
from not having about him a well-educated, properly selected staff,
each member drilled in his specific duties. Till now Napoleon had
been his own staff; but with lessening activity, he had no one on
whose eyes and judgment he could rely. “The general staff is so
organized that one cannot see ahead at all by its means,” said he in
the next campaign. Still it must constantly be borne in mind that one
hundred and fifty thousand men cannot be commanded as readily as
forty thousand. And Napoleon’s breadth of view, his power of
grasping the tout ensemble, were still present in greater measure;
and when he chose he could summon up all his old spirit.
Succeeding this defeat were the skilful preparations for a new
crossing and battle, the putting over from Lobau of one hundred and
fifty thousand men and four hundred guns in one night, and the
victory of Wagram. Truly a marvellous performance! The strength of
mind and constancy displayed by Napoleon on Lobau recalls the
elastic courage of Alexander when, cut off from his communications,
he turned upon the Persians at Issus. But after Wagram the
Austrians retired in good order and Napoleon did not pursue. It was
no doubt a difficult task, but with the inspiration of his earlier days he
would certainly have pushed the Archduke home,—or lost the game.
He forgot the principles which had made him what he was, in not
following up the retreat. To other and even great generals this
criticism could not apply, but Napoleon has created a measure by
which himself must be tried and which fits but a limited group. In
1805 he said, “One has but a certain time for war. I shall be good for
it but six years more; then even I shall have to stop.” Was
Napoleon’s best term drawing to a close? Or was it that the
Archduke Charles was not a Würmser or a Mack?
In Napoleon’s battles, tactical details are made to yield to
strategic needs. Frederick generally chose his point of attack from a
strictly tactical standpoint. Napoleon did not appear to consider that
there were such things as tactical difficulties. He always moved on
the enemy as seemed to him strategically desirable, and with his
great masses he could readily do so. The result of Napoleon’s
battles was so wonderful, just because he always struck from such a
strategic direction as to leave a beaten enemy no kind of loophole.
But Napoleon would have been more than human if his extraordinary
successes had not finally damaged his character. It is but the story of
Alexander with a variation. In the beginning he was, after securing
strategic value, strenuous to preserve his tactical values. By and by
he began to pay less heed to these; stupendous successes bred
disbelief in failure; carelessness resulted, then indecision. Those
historians who maintain that Napoleon succumbed solely to the
gigantic opposition his status in Europe had evoked, can show good
reasons for their belief, for Napoleon’s task was indeed immense.
But was he overtaxed more than Hannibal, Cæsar, or Frederick?
In the Russian campaign (1812) Napoleon’s original idea was to
turn the Russian right, but finding the Russian position further north
than he expected, he resorted to breaking the Russian centre. It here
first became a question whether the rule of one mass on one line,
distinctly sound with smaller armies, will hold good with the
enormous armies of 1812 or of modern days; whether the mere
manœuvre may not become so difficult of execution as to open the
way to the destruction of the entire plan by a single accident.
Certainly its logistics grow to a serious problem with a force beyond
two hundred thousand men, and it seems probable that when armies
much exceed this figure, the question of feeding, transportation, and
command, even with railroads and telegraph, make concentric
operations more available. And the fact that even Napoleon could
not, in the absence of a thoroughly educated staff and perfectly
drilled army, obtain good results from the handling of such enormous
forces, gives prominence to the value of the Prussian idea of placing
greater reliance on an army drawn from the personal service of the
people and made perfect in all its details from the ranks up, than on
the genius of a single general.
The entire plan of the Russian campaign was consistent and
good. The Bonaparte of 1796 would probably have carried it through,
despite its unprecedented difficulties. But its execution was seriously
marred by the absence of Napoleon at the front, and the want of his
ancient decisiveness. To be sure he had nearly half a million men to
command and feed; but he was no longer the slim, nervously active,
omnipresent man. He was corpulent, liked his ease, and shunned
bad weather. This want appears in his long stay in Wilna, his failure
to put his own individuality into the details of the advance; his now
relying on his lieutenants, whom he had never trained, and some of
whom were unable, to rely on themselves. Napoleon began to draw
his conclusions, not from personal observation, but from assumed
premises. He had from the beginning the habit of underrating the
enemy’s forces. It now grew to be a rule with him to take one-third off
from what the enemy really had and double his own forces, in order
to encourage his subordinates. This exaggerated reckoning could
not but lead to evil. There is none of Frederick’s straightforward
dependence on his own brain and his army’s courage. The king’s
frankness stands out in high relief against Napoleon’s simulation.
But we must constantly bear in mind that Napoleon led an army
of unprecedented size, made up of different nationalities, in a
limitless territory, and that his difficulties were enormous. It should be
noted that Alexander’s largest army in the field numbered one
hundred and thirty-five thousand men; Hannibal’s less than sixty
thousand; Cæsar’s about eighty thousand; Gustavus’ never reached
eighty thousand men; Frederick had to parcel out his forces so that
of his one hundred and fifty thousand men he rarely could personally
dispose of more than fifty thousand in one body. Napoleon carried
three hundred and sixty thousand men into Russia. This is not a final
measure of the task, but it stakes out its size.
Some of Napoleon’s Russian manœuvres are fully up to the old
ones. The manner of the attempt to turn the Russian left at
Smolensk and seize their communications so as to fight them at a
disadvantage, is a magnificent exhibition of genius. But at the last
moment he failed. The spirit of his plan was to seize the
communications of his opponent and force him to fight; the letter was
to seize Smolensk. When he reached Smolensk, the Russians had
retired to the east of the city. Napoleon apparently overlooked the
spirit of his plan, and though he could easily have done so, he did
not cut the Russians off by a tactical turning movement. He was not
personally where he needed to be,—on the right,—but remained at
his headquarters. It may be claimed that the commander of so huge
an army must necessarily remain at central headquarters. It is rather
true that his administrative aide should be there, and he at the point
of greatest importance. At Smolensk, theoretically and practically,
this was the right, and operations at this point were intrusted to by no
means the best of his subordinates. Napoleon’s intellect was still as
clear as ever. It was his physique and his power of decision which
were weakening. Even allowing the utmost to all the difficulties of the
situation, if tried by the rule of 1796 or 1805, this seems to be
indisputable.
When Napoleon did not bring on a battle at Smolensk, the
Russian campaign had become a certain failure. For it was there
settled that he could not reach Moscow with a force sufficient to hold
himself. He had crossed the Niemen with three hundred and sixty-
three thousand men. At Moscow he could have no more than one
hundred thousand. Arrived at Smolensk he was called on to face
retreat, which was failure; or an advance to Moscow, which was but
worse failure deferred,—almost sure annihilation. This seems clear
enough from the military standpoint. But Napoleon advanced to
Moscow relying largely on the hope that the Russians would sue for
a peace. For this dubious hope of the statesman, Napoleon
committed an undoubted blunder as a captain. It is hard to divorce
the statesman from the soldier. All great captains have relied on
state-craft, and properly so. But such was the purely military
syllogism.
Much has been written about Napoleon’s failure to put the guard
in at Borodino. Under parallel conditions at an earlier day, he would
certainly have done so. That he did not is but one link more in the
growing chain of indecisiveness. But had he done so, and won a
more complete victory, would it have made any eventual difference?
Smolensk was his last point of military safety. Even had he been
able to winter in Russia, it is not plain how spring would have
bettered his case, in view of the logistic difficulties and of the temper
of the Russian emperor and people. Time in this campaign was of
the essence.
Once or twice on the terrible retreat, Napoleon’s old fire and
decision came to the fore, but during the bulk of it he was apparently
careless of what was happening. He habitually left to his generals all
but the crude direction of the outlying corps. The contrast between
Napoleon in this disaster and Napoleon after raising the siege of
Acre, or after the defeat at Aspern and Essling, is marked. He did not
oppose his old countenance to misfortune.
After this campaign, in which the grand army of half a million
men was practically annihilated, Napoleon showed extraordinary
energy in raising new troops, and actually put into the field, the
succeeding spring, no less than three hundred and fifty thousand
men. They were not the old army, but they were so many men.
Napoleon understood this: “We must act with caution, not to bring
bad troops into danger, and be so foolish as to think that a man is a
soldier.” He had thirteen hundred guns. “Poor soldiers need much
artillery.” The lack of good officers was the painful feature. The few
old ones who were left were ruined by bad discipline. The new ones
were utterly inexperienced.
In the campaign of 1813, Napoleon showed all his old power of
conception. The intellectual force of this man never seemed
overtaxed. But the lack of resolution became still more marked. He
began by winning two battles,—Lützen and Bautzen,—in which he
freely exposed himself and worked with all his old energy, to lend his
young troops confidence. He was then weak enough to enter into an
armistice with the allies. This was a singularly un-Napoleonic thing to
do. He had turned the enemy’s right and was strategically well
placed. It was just the time to push home. If the reasons he alleged
—want of cavalry and fear of the dubious position of Austria—were
really the prevailing ones, Napoleon was no longer himself, for his
wonderful successes hitherto had come from bold disregard of just
such things.
Napoleon here shows us how often fortune is of a man’s own
making. So long as he would not allow circumstances to dictate to
him, fortune was constant. When he began to heed adverse facts,
we see first indecisive victories, then half successes, and by and by
we shall see failure and destruction.
The operations about and succeeding Dresden show a
vacillation which contrasts with the intellectual vigor. For the first time
Napoleon conducted a defensive campaign. He studied his chances
of an offensive, and cast them aside for reasons which would not
have weighed a moment with him in 1805. And yet the defensive
against his concentrically advancing enemies was no doubt the best
policy. It shows Napoleon’s judgment to have been better than ever.
After this brilliant victory Napoleon ordered a pursuit—which he
ought to have made effective—across the Erzgebirge, but without
issuing definite instructions. Sickness forbade the personal
supervision he had expected to give; troops intended to sustain the
advanced corps were diverted from this duty by a sudden change of
purpose. Here was, as Jomini says, “without contradiction, one of
Napoleon’s gravest faults.” But Napoleon had got used to seeing
things turn in his favor, until he deemed constant personal effort
unnecessary. Decreasing strength had limited his activity; great
exertion was irksome. The immediate result of this ill-ordered
operation was the destruction of a corps; the secondary result, the
re-encouragement of the allies, whose morale had been badly
shaken by three defeats, and whose main army he should have
followed into Bohemia and broken up. The grand result was loss of
time, which to Napoleon was a dead loss, a new advance of the
allies, and the battle of Leipsic. During all this time, while Napoleon’s
execution was weak compared to his old habit, his utterances and
orders showed the clearest, broadest conception of what was
essential. But he was no longer the man who used to gallop forty to
sixty miles a day to use his eyes. Even at Leipsic he exhibited at
times his old power; when defeat was certain he lapsed into the
same indifference he had shown on the Russian retreat.
Nothing now, in a military sense, could save Napoleon, except to
concentrate all his forces into one body and manœuvre against the
allies with his old vigor. But the Emperor Napoleon could not bear to
give up Italy, Belgium, Spain, as General Bonaparte had given up
Mantua to beat the enemy at Castiglione; and he committed the
grievous mistake of not concentrating all his forces for the defence of
France. The campaign around Paris is a marvel of audacious
activity, though indeed it did not bring up any of the larger intellectual
problems of Marengo, Ulm, or Jena. If Napoleon had done half as
good work with the larger army he might have had, there is scarce a
doubt but that he would have gone far towards peace with honor. As
it was, he was crushed by numbers. But no words can too highly
phrase his military conduct, within its limits, in this brief campaign.
There is but one mistake,—the underrating of his enemy, the
misinterpretation of manifest facts.
The Waterloo campaign (1815), as already said, bears marked
resemblance to that of 1796. The details of Waterloo are so well
known that only the reasons will be noted which appear to make
Napoleon’s first so great a success and his last so great a failure.
At the beginning of June, Napoleon had available for Belgium,
where he proposed to strike the allied forces, one hundred and ten
thousand foot, and thirteen thousand five hundred horse. In Belgium
were Wellington, covering Brussels with ninety-five thousand men,
and Blucher lying from Charleroi to Namur with one hundred and
twenty-four thousand. Napoleon was superior to either; inferior to
both together. He chose against these allied armies the same
offensive manœuvre he had employed against Beaulieu and Colli,—
a strategic breaking of their centre, so as to separate them and
attack each one separately. The controlling reasons were the same.
The allies were of different nationalities, and each had a different
base, as well as varying interests. If cut in two they no doubt would
retire eccentrically, of which Napoleon could take immediate
advantage. The key to the whole problem was the exhibition by him
of foresight, boldness, and rapid action. The plan could not be better.
He concentrated on Charleroi. From here led two pikes, one to
Brussels, which was Wellington’s line of advance and retreat, one to
Liège, which was Blucher’s. Wellington and Blucher were connected
by the Namur-Nivelles road, which cut the other pikes at Quatre-Bras
and near Ligny. In order to push in between the allies to any effect,
Napoleon must seize on both these points.
 WATERLOO CAMPAIGN
The French army broke up June 15th at 3 A.M. Napoleon was
full of eagerness and early in the saddle. The French advanced with
slight opposition to Quatre-Bras, and forced the Prussians back to
Fleurus. Napoleon remained in the saddle all day, then retired to
Charleroi overcome with a fatigue which seemed to paralyze his
mental faculties. He could no longer conquer sleep as of old. His
bodily condition was bad, and even the necessity of present success
was unable to evoke persistent effort. There is a singular difference
between Napoleon at this time and grim old Frederick in 1759
suffering from gout. The king never gave up for an instant his
restless work. Disease and pain could not subdue his obstinate
diligence. The emperor’s ailments overcame his zeal. Here began
those little lapses of unused time whose addition, in four days,
sufficed to bring Napoleon to the end of his career. The plan of
campaign was as brilliantly thought out and begun as that of 1796,
and with equal vigor would have equally succeeded. Wellington and
Blucher had foreseen the manœuvre, and agreed to concentrate for
mutual support at Quatre-Bras and Ligny. But Wellington, instead of
holding Quatre-Bras, gave Nivelles as the rallying-point. Not even
Würmser or Mack could have made an error more in Napoleon’s
favor, for this separated him from Blucher instead of gaining him his
support. Napoleon had the chance to strike Blucher singly.
Wellington had not yet assembled. Napoleon should have reached
Quatre-Bras and Ligny on the 15th, as he could easily have done, or
at a very early hour on the 16th. But no orders even were issued till
nearly 9 A.M. of the 16th. In his old days, Napoleon would have been
at the outposts at daylight, have gauged the situation with his own
eyes and his incomparable power of judgment, and would have
attacked at an early hour. But he did not reach the ground till noon
nor finish his reconnoissance till 2 P.M. Ney had been sent to
Quatre-Bras.
Despite delays, however, part of Napoleon’s plan did succeed.
Wellington was prevented from joining Blucher, and Blucher was
beaten and fell back in disorder. Now Napoleon’s object was so to
manœuvre as to keep the allies apart. This could be done only by
immediate pursuit. He must push on after Blucher relentlessly, so as
to throw him off in an easterly direction, where he could observe him
with a small force, while he should dispose of Wellington singly. And
the more Wellington should manage to push back Ney, the graver
danger he would run.
Nothing was done about the pursuit of Blucher on the night of
16th to 17th. Next morning Napoleon leisurely visited the battle-field
of Ligny and conversed with his officers about indifferent things.
None of the old-time drive was manifest. It was again noon before he
ordered Grouchy in pursuit of the Prussians, while he himself would
turn against the English. Grouchy got off about 2 P.M. No one knew
at that time whether Blucher had retired on Namur or Wavre. In
earlier days Napoleon would have ascertained this fact with his own
eyes, for it was the one fact to make no mistake about. Whether to
ascertain this was the duty of the staff or the general is immaterial.
That Napoleon did not do so may not have been his fault; but it was
his misfortune. Great captains have won success by personal activity
and by relying only on themselves in critical matters. In estimating a
great soldier, one must number all his errors of omission and
commission. No general may shelter himself behind the lapse of a
subordinate. He must stand or fall by what he himself does or fails to
do.
But the fate of the campaign was already sealed. Blucher had
had the night of the 16th to 17th, and the morning of the 17th, and he
had used the respite well. He boldly threw up his own base on Liège
and marched on Wavre to rejoin Wellington. Napoleon had assumed
that Blucher would retire along his line of communications. He
desired him to do this, and erroneously calculated on his having
done so. The object of breaking the allied centre, the sundering of
the allies so as to beat them in detail, had been forfeited by the
sixteen or eighteen hours of unnecessary delays after the battle of
Ligny.
The battle of Waterloo itself has been so fully and ably discussed
from this rostrum, and Grouchy’s part of the failure so clearly
explained, that I will go no further. It seems clear that the battle was
lost on the day preceding it. If Blucher did not join Wellington by one
means he would by another, when Napoleon gave him so many
hours leeway. Nothing but the old activity in following up his initial
success could possibly have enabled Napoleon to fight Wellington
and Blucher separately,—and if they joined they were sure to beat
him. Had he kept right on, he would have beaten Wellington, and
Blucher would have retired. His difficulties here were not great. He
was successful in his early steps, and failed in later ones. The
explanation of the whole matter lies in the fact that Napoleon’s
physical powers and moral initiative had waned. His intellect was
unimpaired, but his character had lost its native quality.
No man should be subject to criticism for inability to do his best
work when suffering from disease. It is not intended to criticise in this
sense. La critique est facile; l’art est difficile. The motto of these
lectures is that coexistent intellect, character, and opportunity go to
make the great captain. We see Napoleon for twelve years possibly
the greatest soldier who ever lived. We then see his successes
lessen. It was not from declining intellect. It was partly lesser
opportunity,—that is, greater difficulties,—partly loss of activity and
decisiveness,—or, in other words, character,—proceeding from
weakening physique or decrease of moral strength. There may be
room for doubt whether failing health alone, or failing health
combined with waning character, caused the indecisiveness. It
descends into a question of nomenclature. Of the bald fact there can
be no doubt. Napoleon at Waterloo was not as great as Napoleon at
Austerlitz.
The secret of Napoleon’s power lay in his clear eye for facts, his
positive mind. Carlyle says: “The man had a certain, instinctive,
ineradicable feeling for reality, and did base himself upon fact so
long as he had any basis.” Napoleon said of himself that he was
most of a slave of all men, obliged to obey a heartless master, the
calculation of circumstances and the nature of things. Coupled with
this were a reliance on facts, rare capacity for divination, and an
immense power of imagination. But finally the latter overran the other
qualities. His successes convinced him that he could do anything; he
forgot what his success had been grounded on, and he began to
neglect facts. “It is not possible” is not French, said he. This is the
best of maxims construed one way,—the worst, if misconstrued.
Napoleon believed himself able to accomplish all things, until his
accuracy of judgment was lost in his refusal to look facts in the face.
He ceased to be slave of the nature of things. He deserted belief in
facts for belief in his destiny. Finally facts became for him not what
they were, but what he wished them to be. He refused credit to what
did not suit his theory of how things ought to turn.
Napoleon had what rarely coexists,—an equally clear head on
the map and in the field. On the map he was able in both theory and
practice. His theories are text-books; his letters are treatises. No
higher praise can be spoken than to say that every one of
Napoleon’s fourteen campaigns was, in a military sense, properly
planned.
 Napoleon showed the value of masses in strategy as well as
tactics. In former times the worth of troops was of greater value than
numbers. To-day worth of itself is less essential than it was.
Napoleon founded his calculations on the equality of thousands. It is
he who collated all that was done by the other great captains,
clothed it in a dress fit for our own days, and taught the modern
world how to make war in perfect form.
Strategy will always remain the same art. Its uses are to-day
varied by railroads, telegraphs, arms of precision. What was not
allowable in the Napoleonic era can be undertaken now with safety.
But all this has only modified, it has not changed strategy. The
tendency of modern armies is toward better organization. Ramrod
discipline is giving way to dependence on the individuality of officers
and men, and to instruction in doing what at the moment is the most
expedient thing. But every great soldier will be great hereafter from
the same causes which have made all captains what they were; in
conducting war he will be governed by the same intellectual and
moral strength which they exhibited, and will do, as they always did,
what befits the time, unfettered by rules and maxims, but with a
broad comprehension of their true value.
Napoleon is so close to this generation that he sometimes
appears to us gigantic beyond all others. He certainly moulded into
shape the method in use to-day, which the Prussians have carried
forward to its highest development by scrupulous preparation in
every department, personal service, and the teaching of individuals
to act with intelligent independence. That Napoleon was always
intellectually the equal, and, in the first part of his career in the moral
forces, the equal of any of the captains, cannot be denied. But we
must remember that because Napoleon wrought in our own times we
can the better appreciate what he did, while our more meagre
knowledge of the others makes it impossible to see as clearly the
manner in which, to accomplish their great deeds, they must have
patterned their means to the work to be done. “The most important
qualities of an army leader,” says Jomini, “will always be a great
character or constitutional courage, which leads to great
determinations; sang froid or bodily courage which conquers danger;
learning appears in third line, but it will be a strong help.”
Napoleon exhibited these qualities in full measure up to 1808,
and comes close to being, at his best, the greatest of the captains.
He failed to exhibit the moral power in as great measure thereafter. It
was not years, for Cæsar and Frederick were older when they
showed these same qualities in the highest degree. That Napoleon
lost activity and decisiveness, and thereby forfeited success, is no
reproach. No man can keep his faculties beyond a certain period. He
lacked that equipoise which enables a man to stand success. He did
not last as the others lasted; and proved that only so long as a man
retains the highest grade of character can he remain a great captain.
At the same time it is but fair to repeat that the conditions under
which Napoleon worked gradually became more difficult; that the
allies learned from him as the Romans did from Hannibal, and made
fewer mistakes as the years went on; that he was not always able to
retain about him the most efficient of his marshals; that he
commanded vastly larger armies than the other captains. His task
was larger accordingly.
Napoleon’s strategy shows a magnificence in conception, a
boldness in execution, and a completeness and homogeneity not
shown by any other leader. The other captains can only stand beside
him because they builded so that he might add; they invented so that
he might improve. But while Napoleon reached a height beyond the
others, they did not show the decrease of genius which he showed.
Too little time is left to draw a satisfactory comparison between
Napoleon and his peers in arms. In Frederick we recognize a man of
higher standard than Napoleon reached. Not merely because
Frederick was, of all the captains, the only one who, with vastly
smaller forces, attacked troops equal to his own and defeated them
right and left,—in other words, because he was typical tactician, the
typical fighter,—but because he was steadfast in victory and defeat
alike; because he was so truly a king to his people as well as a
soldier; because he so truly merged his own self in the good of
Prussia. Napoleon flared like a comet. Frederick burned like a planet
or a fixed star,—less brilliant, less startling, but ever constant.
Frederick at the close of his life was the same great man. Napoleon
had burned out his lamp. Frederick never waned. Years or infirmity
never changed his force or determination, or limited his energies.
Moreover, Frederick, like Hannibal, was greater in disaster than in
success. Napoleon succumbed to disaster. Frederick and Hannibal
alone held themselves against overwhelming civilized armies. They
were stronger, more able, more determined, more to be feared the
more misfortune crowded upon them. We instinctively couple
Napoleon’s genius with his greatest success; we couple Hannibal’s
or Frederick’s with their direst disasters. Alexander and Gustavus
never looked real disaster in the face, as Frederick before Leuthen,
or Hannibal after the Metaurus. Nor indeed did Cæsar. But Cæsar
opposed wonderful countenance to threatening calamity.
Looking at Napoleon and Gustavus, it is perhaps impossible to
compare them. Gustavus was immeasurably above all the others in
purity of character, and their equal in force and intellect. To him we
owe the revival of intellectual war, lost for seventeen centuries; and
on what he did Frederick and Napoleon builded. Napoleon is nearer
akin to Cæsar. Perhaps, take them all in all, as soldiers, statesmen,
law-givers, Cæsar and Napoleon are the two greatest men. But they
sink below the rest in their motives and aspirations. Neither ever lost
sight of self; while Alexander’s ambition was not only to conquer the
East, but to extend Greek civilization; the motive of Hannibal and
Frederick was patriotic, and that of Gustavus love of country and
religion. Three of the captains were kings from the start. Their
ambition was naturally impersonal. Of the other three, Hannibal
alone worked from purely unselfish motives.
Nor can we compare Napoleon with Hannibal. In his successes
Napoleon is equally brilliant, more titanic; in his failures he falls so far
below the level of this great pattern of patient, never-yielding
resistance to adversity as to be lost. To Alexander fighting semi-
civilized armies, Napoleon can only be likened in his Egyptian
campaigns, and in this he in no sense rises to the height of the
Macedonian. Napoleon’s genius was most apparent on the familiar
fields of Europe.
 In intellectual grasp, all six great captains stand side by side. In
enthusiastic activity and in all the qualities which compel good
fortune, Alexander stands clearly at the head. No one but Frederick
has perhaps so brilliant a string of tactical jewels as Hannibal, while
in a persistent unswerving struggle of many years to coerce success
against the constantly blackening frowns of Fortune, Hannibal stands
alone and incomparable. Cæsar was a giant in conception and
execution alike, and stands apart in having taught himself in middle
life how to wage war, and then waging in it a fashion equalled only
by the other five. Gustavus will always rank, not only as the man who
rescued intellectual war from oblivion, but as the most splendid
character, in nobility of purpose and intelligence of method, which
the annals of the world have to show. Frederick is not only the Battle
Captain who never blenched at numbers, but truly the Last of the
Kings,—king and priest, in the history of mankind. Napoleon carries
us to the highest plane of genius and power and success, and then
declines. We begin by feeling that here is indeed the greatest of the
captains, and we end by recognizing that he has not acted out the
part. No doubt, taking him in his many-sidedness, Cæsar is the
greatest character in history. It may not unfairly be claimed that
Napoleon follows next, especially in that he preserved for Europe
many germs of the liberty which was born of the blood of the
Revolution. Cæsar was the most useful man of antiquity; Napoleon
comes near to being the most useful man of modern times. But
neither Cæsar nor Napoleon appeal to us as do splendid, open-
hearted Alexander; patient, intrepid, ever-constant Hannibal; the
Christian hero, Gustavus; and daring, obstinate, royal Frederick.