Cameo and the Vampire Read Online Free PDF Page A

door.
    Opal righted himself.
    Cameo's expression shifted to one that was serious. She pulled her dagger and moved toward the door. "Who is it?"
    "My name is Gunther Kingaby. I'm a doctor.... Winnie, the apothecary, sent me."
    Cameo opened the door a crack. A young man was standing at the door, and behind him was one of the girls who had been playing cards with Opal. "You," she motioned to the woman, "leave."
    "I was just helping him find his way to Mister Black's room."
    Cameo stared at her. She couldn't be too careful; the woman was standing directly behind the doctor, and she might have a weapon in her hand.
    Perturbed, the woman scurried away.
    The assassin opened up the door for Gunther. "Come in."
    Mister Kingaby glanced at Cameo anxiously as he moved past her, a pack slung over one shoulder.
    "Well, hello Doctor," Opal greeted him brightly.
    Gunther took in the form of this new individual: a rangy middle-aged man, broken and scarred, sitting in a chair before him. "This must be the patient."
    "That's right," Cameo uttered, closing the door.
    "Do you think you can fix this ... predicament I seem to be in?" Although he had come to the conclusion that he would be living out the rest of his life as an invalid, Opal's tone was tinged with hope. He could, after all, have overlooked some possibility for medical healing that he, only a revolutionary, may not have known about.
    The doctor pulled out something that looked like a splint from his shoulder-pack.
    Opal sighed. No, no hope at all for some miracle, medical cure.
    Then he pulled forth a phial of reddish-brown liquid.
    "A tincture," the dandy said. "Ah, yes. I believe we have that."
    Cameo took it from the man's fingers. "That's fine. We may run out." And then she met Gunther's dark eyes, "He doesn't want to take it."
    He did his best impression of complete understanding, but in actuality he wanted to leave as soon as possible. Peg, the wench who had walked him upstairs, had mentioned that she believed the woman in black was actually Cameo, an assassin who had been with the Association for years. Now that he had seen her, he had to agree that she resembled the wanted posters, and the whitish orbs she had for eyes coincided with the ghost stories he'd been told when he was a lad—a little too well, actually, for him, a man of enlightened thinking.
    "Well," he said to Opal, "your hands are broken."
    "Really?"
    "Yes," he said, ignoring the sarcasm in the rather rangy man's tone. "And I believe putting them in splints is really the only solution. You may want to take the painkiller before I begin."
    "How bad is it going to be?"
    "You need the tincture."
    He motioned for Cameo to give him more.
    "Will this heal his broken bones?"
    He took a deep breath, "Yes, but I can tell you right now that with the severity of the breaks in his hands and fingers, they will never work the same again." He turned to speak directly to Opal, "What happened to you?"
    "No questions." Cameo said, replacing the flask.
    "All right," he said, lifting Opal's arm and pushing back his sleeve to fit a splint on the underside of his arm. "You will probably regain some motion in your hands once they get the opportunity to heal."
    The dandy gritted his teeth. Simply having his fingers manipulated was agony, somewhat deadened now with the painkiller, but nonetheless an unpleasant experience.
     
    * * * * *
    "Read me some of Bel's poetry."
    She turned to look in Opal's direction. He hadn't said a thing in hours, and Cameo had assumed he was asleep, so she hadn't bothered to light any candles, and now his upper body was in shadow.
    "What was that?" She set down the deck of cards she'd been toying with. "I didn't think you regarded Bel's poetry with much esteem."
    He chuckled a bit. "No, I don't ... but I was thinking about him."
    She remembered the night Bel had been killed by Haffef. The odd, sickening sound that his back made as the vampire snapped it, a deep sound. "All right," she stood, "but first I think