She blinked back a half-formed, inexplicable tear. Oh, G.o.d, driving-she had to watch where she was driving. She"d just missed the turn-off. She stopped the car and looked behind her. There was no one on the road back there. Slowly, with a noise of rumbling gravel, she backed and filled until she was headed back the right way. Then she drove up to the house without losing track of time even once. She switched off the car and the headlights disappeared and everything was dark. She sat in the cooling car and stared at the dark house. Deanna had always left a light on for her before.
It was only the whining of the dogs that spurred her to action. She had forgotten them-how could she forget them? But she had, she had forgotten her dogs and they hadn"t eaten in over a day. They were watered automatically with a gravity bottle but they hadn"t eaten. They would be starving. She didn"t even go into the house, just ran back to the kennels and grabbed a twenty-pound bag of kibble. She switched on the lights inside the kennel and gasped.
The dogs looked okay-but something had tried to tear their cages open. The greyhounds lay curled up behind warped and bent bars, crying and whining and yawning in fearful confusion. Blood and what looked like a strip of cloth hung on the bars near her. Caxton stepped closer and touched the damaged cage. It wasn"t cloth. It was corroded flesh, torn off in a hurry. A half-dead had been there and not very long before. Clearly it had meant to kill the dogs, only to get its arm torn open instead.
She let the dogs out and hugged them and poured them bowls of food. Hunger won out over their bewilderment and they ate greedily. She squeezed vitamins from a plastic bottle into the kibble and left them at it. Then she went back to her car and retrieved her Beretta and the box of cross points. With fumbling, half-frozen hands she loaded the pistol and then she went to the front door of the house.
Why had they come? She had expected they would leave the house alone, if n.o.body was inside. She couldn"t figure it out. She touched the k.n.o.b of the door and knew instantly that it was unlocked.
Careful, wary of anyone who might be waiting just inside, she slipped on her flashlight and stepped through the door. Cold silence blew past her, cold air rushing through the house. It leaked in around the cardboard over the kitchen window, the window that had killed Deanna. It swept down the hallway toward their bedroom. She reached for the light switch but it did nothing when she flicked it. She looked up and saw that the light fixtures in the hall had been smashed, all the bulbs broken.
Even in the darkness she could see the house had been ransacked. Sheets lay twisted and strewn across the hall as if they"d been dragged off the bed. Plates and pots and the iron skillet had been jumbled all together and thrown in a corner. Some were broken, but there had been no method to it. Whoever had done this had been in a hurry, or perhaps a frenzy. The pictures were torn off the walls and thrown on the floor. Her flashlight beam struck one of them and dazzled her with the reflection off the gla.s.s. She looked closer. It was a picture of Deanna and Caxton at an agility tournament, the two of them bent low, beckoning Wilbur across a balance beam. G.o.d, what an amazing day that had been. The gla.s.s was cracked and the frame broken. She fished the photo out and put it in her pocket, trying to save something.
The bedroom was a real mess. Sharp claws or maybe knives had torn up the mattress and bits and pieces of foam rubber were scattered everywhere. Caxton"s closet had been rifled, most of her clothes just dumped in a heap. It was going to take so long to clean this all up, she thought. She turned around and gasped again when she saw that the intruder had left her a message. It covered half the bedroom wall and it looked like it had been painted in blood: NO LIFE= NO SLEEP BE WITH ME She didn"t need a signature to know who had sent the message. It had to be Scapegrace, the last of Justinia Malvern"s brood. He wanted her to finish the transformation that Reyes had started. He was waiting for her to commit suicide and come be his partner in reviving Malvern. He must have somehow convinced himself that destroying her home would be an incentive toward that end. Maybe he thought it would depress her.
The piece of Reyes still curled around her brain pulsed, rejecting the idea, and she understood, a little-or rather she knew how little Scapegrace understood. Vampirism had been a dark gift as far as the teenager was concerned. How could anyone not want that power and strength? He was telling her she no longer needed to sleep, that she could break out of the prison of her frail human flesh and emotions and become so much more.
"Then why does he cut off his own ears every sundown?" she asked, but Reyes fell silent on that matter. Thinking of the dead boy made her more sad than angry. Petty destruction of other people"s property was the only outlet left for his rage, now that he had destroyed himself.
She checked the rest of the house but there was no one there. Scapegrace and his minions were long gone. She took another look at the bed and realized she would never be able to spend the night there. She decided to call Clara and see if her invitation still held. To get a better signal she headed out back, toward Deanna"s shed. The door stood unlocked and ajar, of course. Scapegrace had tried to hurt her dogs. He hated everything about the living. He would have destroyed Deanna"s art as well.
She stepped inside and closed her phone before she"d even found Clara"s number. She switched on the lights and they actually worked, the bare hundred watt bulbs in the ceiling flaring to life. The shed looked completely untouched. The three sheets hung slack from the ceiling, the light filtering yellow and red through the cloth. Perhaps Scapegrace had seen something in Deanna"s art. Maybe he approved of using blood as a medium-though surely he wouldn"t have known what kind of blood it was. She turned to head back outside and stopped because she heard a footfall that wasn"t hers.
"Laura," someone said, and for a bad moment she thought it was her father"s ghost inhabiting the sheets, just as he had inhabited the teleplasm in Urie Polder"s barn.
It was Arkeley who stepped out from behind the artwork, however. "Special Deputy," she said, her heart racing at first. It slowed down as she watched him come closer. She thought it might stop. "I didn"t expect to see you here."
His face was creased with sorrow. "Laura," he said again, "I"m so sorry. I didn"t want to bring you this far into this."
Was he actually apologizing for getting Deanna killed? Grief was like some kind of thicker skin she"d put on. Whatever he was saying just didn"t get through to her. "It"s alright," she said. It wasn"t, but the words came out of her like a yawn, completely unavoidable.
"I needed bait, you see. I needed you because they needed you. The only way to escape a trap is to spring it before they"re ready, remember?"
"You"ve taught me so much." It was her body talking, not her heart. Her body wanted to go to bed. Clara. She had to call Clara, Clara had to come pick her up. It would be at least an hour before she could sleep. She started texting Clara because it was easier somehow than talking to her on the phone. She was done talking for the night.
"You don"t understand-" Arkeley insisted, but she shook her head. "Laura, you need to focus right now." He stormed toward her and she was sure he was going to hit her again. She stopped breathing and her eyes went wide.
"What is so important?" she asked, finally finding her own voice. "What is so f.u.c.king important that I have to listen to you, tonight of all nights?"
Arkeley drew his weapon. A little gasp came out of her-she had no idea what he was doing.
"They"re outside," he told her. "Waiting for us to walk out of here. Dozens of half-deads and at least two vampires."
"What do you mean, two vampires?" Caxton demanded. "We killed them all except for Scapegrace. You don"t mean-Malvern, you can"t mean that." "No, I don"t," Arkeley said. He checked the action on his Glock 23. He gestured at her own Beretta where it lay inert in her hand. She checked to see there was a round in the chamber and then she raised the weapon to shoulderheight, the barrel pointed at the ceiling. "Malvern is still at Arabella Furnace. I had Tucker check on her fifteen minutes ago and there was no change in her condition. So we have to a.s.sume that we made at least one mistake."
"We saw three coffins at the hunting camp," she insisted. She didn"t want to hear what he said next, even though it was already echoing in the dark cloister of her own skull.
"That doesn"t mean there couldn"t have been another one somewhere else." Arkeley moved toward the light switch, careful to stay out of the shed"s wide doorway. "Let"s go over what I do know. I came here tonight to officially relieve you of duty. I was going to send you back to the Highway Patrol. Then I saw that something was wrong. There were maybe ten cars and trucks parked out on the road. I looked around but none of your neighbors were having a party. I abandoned my own vehicle and came in here on foot, through the woods. By then they were already setting up their ambush. There are six half-deads hiding out by the driveway, there are five of them stationed in the yard next door, and three more of them on the roof of the kennels. There will be more-those are just the ones I found. I saw one vampire giving them orders. His ears were docked so we have to a.s.sume that was Scapegrace. Then another vampire climbed out of your bedroom window."
"You"re absolutely sure it was a vampire you saw coming out of the window? How good a look did you get?"
He shook his head. "I can"t be certain of anything. But I saw something with pale white skin and long ears. Its hands were stained red." Caxton moved up to the other side of the doorway, just as she"d been trained. When they left the shed they would go together, facing slightly different directions so they could cover each others" backs.
She texted Clara and told her to summon reinforcements. She called in to headquarters to report an officer under fire. She knew n.o.body could get there in time-the closest barracks was twenty miles away. They were going to have to fight their way out on their own, just the two of them. She looked up at Arkeley. "Do we have a plan?" she asked.
"Yes," he told her. "Shoot everything that moves." Together they stepped through the doorway. Arkeley raised his weapon and fired even before her eyes had adjusted to the darkness. She saw a shadow coming toward her, a shadow with a broken face, and she shot it center ma.s.s. It crumpled and fell without a sound.
There were more of them. Suddenly they were everywhere. Shadows detached from the trees, pale shapes darted around them like wolves circling to the attack. There were no warnings given this time, no cryptic messages to draw them out. A half-dead whirled out of the dark, a six-inch knife in his hand, and Caxton smashed him across the face with her weapon. He went down but not before three more sprang out at her. "There are too many," she shouted. "We need to get out of here!"
"Go," the Fed yelled back, though he was only three feet away. "Go now!" Caxton broke away from Arkeley and dashed to the side of the kennels, intent on getting something behind her at least. Otherwise they might sneak up on her. She expected Arkeley to run for cover as well, to protect himself.
He didn"t.
The Fed dropped into a firing crouch and moved out into the open s.p.a.ce between the kennels and the house. His gun arm stood straight out from his body and it swung back and forth like a weathervane as he tracked some a.s.sailant she couldn"t see. He squeezed the trigger and bright fire leapt from his barrel. To her side, just inches from her left shoulder, a half-dead slipped downward to writhe in agony on the ground.
He spun and fired again-and a third time. Shadows howled and flopped in the darkness, but more of them appeared as if emerging from out of the night, as if they dropped from the moon-colored clouds. One leapt onto his back and bit at his neck with sharp teeth. He smashed its nose with his free fist and knocked it away. Another rolled into his legs and knocked him halfway down, dropping
him to one knee. He shot her in the chest and she jerked backward. A half-dead grabbed his gun arm then and twisted. He yelped in pain-Arkeley, of all people, cried out in pain. He must have been in agony. The half-dead must have caught him completely off his guard. Caxton wondered if his arm was broken.
Not that she didn"t have her own concerns. The half-deads were coming for her, too, though with far less force or numbers. Clearly they didn"t consider her to be a threat on Arkeley"s level. She found herself almost disappointed.
She fired at a dark shape that lunged down across the roof of the kennels and it fell to the ground with a hiss of exhausted breath. She kicked it in the legs and felt its flesh yield. Another half-dead reached down to try to grab her shoulders and he lifted her gun and fired without even looking.
"Go," Arkeley shouted again. She looked over in his direction but could barely see him. He was surrounded on every side by Scapegrace"s servants. She discharged her weapon over and over, trying to thin out the crowd, even as she dashed out, away from the kennels. He was about to be overrun and she knew it but there was very little she could do. She couldn"t save him-she didn"t have enough bullets. Her only hope was to get away herself and find some backup.
The problem was she wasn"t sure where to go next. The driveway lead straight out to the road and the possibility of help. Any police response would come from that direction, a.s.suming she lived long enough for anyone to arrive. Arkeley had said there were half-deads stationed out there, however. They would almost certainly be laying in wait.
Instead she turned to the back of the drive, to where a ten-foot privacy fence cut through the trees. She got a foot in between two of the boards and lunged up and grabbed at the branches that protruded over the top. Adrenaline carried her up and over and she slid down the trees on the other side, branches whipping at her face and digging up long sc.r.a.pes on her hands and arms. She rolled down a steep embankment and into the parking lot of the elementary school next door. In the moonlight the black asphalt sparkled underneath her.
She heard gunfire from the other side of the fence. One shot-two more. Then nothing. She tried to breathe normally, tried to control her urge to panic. Arkeley was probably dead, she decided. That was bad, in many different ways, but it didn"t change her situation.
The trees by the fence shivered and their dry leaves whispered as they rubbed together. Two half-deads were climbing up after her. Chasing her. They would be on her in a second.
She checked her weapon. She only had one round left. She was better off saving it, she decided. She climbed up to her feet and ran.
The school building was low and rectangular, a black edge in the night that she followed. She didn"t know if half-deads could see in total darkness or not-vampires could see your blood glowing in the gloom but what about their servants? It was one of the many things she should have asked Arkeley back when she"d had the chance.
Back when he was still alive. Guilt dripped down her spine as she dashed around a corner and up a short stairway. She could feel guilt and run at the same time. Ahead of her lay a backstop and a chain-link fence, the pale dirt of a baseball diamond. She dashed through a narrow gap in the fence and slid in a patch of dark mud.
There were trees ahead of her. Not such a big surprise. There were trees everywhere in Pennsylvania. They might give her a little cover, she decided. They might shield her from half-dead eyes. She slipped between them and realized her mistake almost instantly. You can"t run at night in a forest, or at least, you can"t run very far. No matter how dark a night might look it"s ten times darker under a forest canopy. Unable to see she could run right into a hardwood trunk or trip over exposed roots. She had a flashlight in her pocket but turning it on would give away her position instantly. Without light she could break her neck, or worse, break a leg. She could end up immobilized but still conscious, end up unable to walk and forced to wait for the half-deads to find her. She needed to get out of the woods-but going back was out of the question.
Ahead of her she saw a patch of wan radiance and headed toward it, her hands outstretched, feeling her way forward. Her boots shuffled forward spasmodically, just waiting to be trapped by thick underbrush or to be sucked down into a puddle of mud.
The light revealed a clearing maybe fifty yards on a side and strangely regular in shape. A few thin saplings grew there but mostly it was covered with overgrown gra.s.s, yellow and thin with the season. She stepped out of the woods and into the relatively bright s.p.a.ce, relief flooding through her body, and then she tripped over a rock. The hard, half-frozen ground connected with her chin and her teeth smashed together with a horrible clinking sound.
She struggled onto her side, then sat up and looked behind her. The stone she"d tripped over was pale, almost ghostly white in the moonlight. It was rough on top but straight on the sides, worn down by wind and rain over the course of centuries but once, long ago, it must have been straight and smooth. A slab of rock planted upright in the soil. Like a gravestone.
She had stumbled right into an abandoned cemetery.
When she knew what to look for it was obvious. The low stones were badly eroded, ground down by time"s wheel until they were just tall enough to trip over. She could see where they made neat rows, however, and at the far end of the clearing she could see twisted bars of metal, the remains of a pair of wrought iron gates.
There were little graveyards like this all over the countryside of Pennsylvania, Caxton knew. Developers hated them because they were legally required to move the bodies if they wanted to tear up the land. More often than not they just left them in place. It was no great shock to find one in the woods behind her house. There must have been a church nearby in some past decade or century but it had been burned or pulled down since. Nor was there was anything to fear from the graves, she told herself-vampires slept in coffins, yes, but they didn"t bury themselves in ancient churchyards just for the ambience.
Something snapped maybe ten yards from her head. A fallen branch or maybe a crust of frost on the ground. It could have just been a cat or a deer-or it could have just been a branch laden down with rain finally giving way.
Caxton froze anyway. Her entire body craned toward her ears, her whole brain tuned up in antic.i.p.ation of the next sound.
It came in a series of tiny pops, like a string of firecrackers going off but much, much softer. Maybe something had trod on a carpet of pine needles. Caxton lowered herself inch by inch until she was lying flat on the ground, trying to make herself small, trying to make herself invisible.