Caxton had no recourse but to scream for him to stop. She might as well have yelled at an avalanche-if anything she just spurred him on. The CO"s face went grey, then white. It never got as white as the vampire"s skin. His eyes rolled around in his head and his body quivered but he never screamed. Maybe Scapegrace had crushed his larynx. When it was over the vampire just threw the body down on the ground. It was useless. Blood ringed his mouth, bright red blood. "They"re all going to die," he told her. Some of the other COs whimpered. One began praying in a sobbing, warbling voice.
Scapegrace took him next.
After the third or fourth victim had been drained Hazlitt cleared his throat. "Leave the rest for now," he said. "Justinia wants to talk to our guest." Scapegrace jumped up and ran his forearm across his wet mouth. He moved across the gra.s.s so quickly he left trails in the air. Without seeming to move at all he had his hands around Hazlitt"s neck. He forced the doctor down to the ground until he was kneeling on the wet gra.s.s, looking up into the vampire"s eyes with sheer terror bringing waxy sweat onto his forehead.
"You"re not one of us yet," Scapegrace said. "You think you can remember that?"
The doctor nodded emphatically. The vampire let him up and then they all went inside.
The tiny skull in Caxton"s hands quivered and she nearly dropped it. She did let out a little squealing noise. Scapegrace and Hazlitt stopped to look back at her. The vampire grinned c.o.c.kily at her predicament.
A millipede with long, hairy feelers had crawled out of the left eye socket and was working its way across the back of her hand. Its body looked wet and slimy. Its legs made her skin itch. It was all she could do not to jerk her hand away. If she did, though, she knew that Scapegrace would cripple her instantly. Knowing the teenaged vampire he would probably put the millipede in her hair, afterwards, just to torture her.
She bent her knees and gritted her teeth and tried not to care. It was just an insect, she told herself. It was extremely unlikely that it was poisonous. Carefully she raised the skull to the level of her mouth. She took a deep breath and blew on the millipede, trying to knock it off her hand. Its head waved in the jet of air but then its back legs anch.o.r.ed between two of her knuckles. She blew harder, and harder, until she thought she might pa.s.s out again.
Scapegrace snorted out a mocking laugh. She sucked in air and then spat it at the millipede until it finally flew off of her hand. The vampire shook his head in amus.e.m.e.nt and then gestured for her to follow. "This way," he said, "if you"re okay, now."
Hazlitt ran ahead into the darkness and switched on a light in the corridor ahead. All but one of the fluorescent tubes in the corridor had been smashed. They hung above her like jagged gla.s.s teeth, sparking now and again. What little light remained was barely enough for her to find her way to the far end of the pa.s.sage. They were headed directly for Malvern"s private ward-she recognized the route they took from her previous visits.
Scapegrace glanced at Hazlitt, then lifted aside the plastic curtain and went inside. Caxton started to follow but the doctor touched her arm and shook his head. Together they stood there for long minutes listening to Scapegrace retch up his cargo of stolen blood. Tucker"s blood, Caxton thought. Maybe Arkeley"s blood. He was feeding Malvern, of course, just as Lares had the night that Arkeley killed him. When Scapegrace was finished and the noises had stopped Hazlitt nodded at her. She pushed through the plastic curtain and stepped into the blue-lit room. Her eyes went out of focus for a moment, adjusting to the new light, and her head grew light. She thought she heard someone calling her name and she swam back to lucidity. She was so scared she thought she must be going crazy. "Laura," she heard, again, a woman"s voice. Was it Malvern? No, that was impossible. Malvern"s vocal cords had dried up a hundred years ago. "Laura." It was as clear and as loud as if someone stood behind her, calling her. She turned but she knew n.o.body would be there. It was as if a ghost were talking, like the ghost in Urie Polder"s barn.
"Officer?" Hazlitt said, looking a little concerned.
"Nothing," she said. Her eyes were slowly adjusting to the blue light. She saw that the room had been changed around a little. The medical equipment had all been shoved back into the corners and the microphones and probes that had once hung down from the ceiling to constantly measure Malvern"s status had all been cleared away. The laptop remained, sitting alone on a metal stool. Caxton glanced down at the coffin propped-up on its sawhorses. Blood filled the coffin almost to the rim. She was sure Malvern was in there, submerged under the dark fluid, but she couldn"t even see a shadow beneath the still surface. Then, as if in response to her stare, a ripple ran across the blood and five tiny peaks appeared
in the surface. They pressed upward out of the coffin and she saw they were fingernails. Malvern"s hand lifted from out of the blood, clotted fluid dripping and falling away from the fingers. There was more flesh on the bones than before-clearly being soaked in human blood was having the predicted effect on Malvern. She was rejuvenating, revivifying. Her hand reached for the keyboard of the laptop and she began to type. Character by character she spelled out a message for her new guest: well come, laura When the vampire was done typing her hand slithered back inside her coffin. It was all so quiet and stately and polite that Caxton felt an absurd urge to curtsey and thank her hostess for her kind hospitality. Scapegrace tapped her on the shoulder, then, and she turned back around. Then she lost her breath. There was a noose hanging down from the ceiling, hovering over a simple wooden chair. "That"s-for me," she stammered. "So I can-so I can-finish myself off and complete the rite."
"Yes," Hazlitt told her. "I want you to know I opted for a lethal injection. I have one made up for myself. They wouldn"t hear of it."
"It"s how your mother did it, right?" Scapegrace asked. He sounded almost solicitous, as if he really wanted to make sure he"d gotten it right. "She hanged herself? The symmetry of it appealed to us."
"Yes, that"s right." She nodded, trying to fight back by being more nonchalant than he was. Her stomach boiled with acid but she refused to let it show. Symmetry. The kind of thing that would appeal to a vampire"s spiky, twisted, obsessive-compulsive mind. "She hanged herself. When I was very young. Is it time, now?" she asked, a lump in her throat. "Is it time for me to." She couldn"t finish the sentence. "You know."
"We"re not quite finished," Scapegrace told her.
A half-dead entered the room and climbed up a step-ladder to hang a pair of thick iron chains from the ceiling. When he was done he took his ladder away and made room for two more half-deads, who dragged something in a big canvas sack into the room. There were ugly stains on one end of the sack. They grunted and cursed as they struggled with their burden but they didn"t complain openly. From time to time they would look up at Scapegrace as if they expected him to pounce on them and tear them apart just for fun.
Finally they got their bag open. Inside was a human body, a big one, dressed up in a dark suit. There was so much blood on the hands and face that Caxton couldn"t determine the race or even the s.e.x of the cadaver.
No-wait, she thought. It wasn"t dead. It moved, though surely only by reflex, a twitch here or there, a last shudder before the body could finally succ.u.mb to mortal wounds. The half-deads attached the dangling chains to the body"s ankles and started hauling it up into the air. Scapegrace moved forward to help them lift it up, over the coffin, until the body dangled over Malvern"s submerged form with its out-stretched fingertips nearly brushing the surface of the pooled blood.
The body swung from side to side, first left, then right. Scapegrace and Hazlitt both kept looking at her face as if they expected her to have some kind of reaction. She"d seen worse, she wanted to tell them. She"d sc.r.a.ped prom queens off the asphalt. Then she realized why they wanted her to see this particular body.
It had a small silver badge on its lapel, a star in a circle. The badge of a Special Deputy of the US Marshals Service.
"Arkeley," she said, "oh G.o.d, it"s Arkeley. You"ve killed him." She had already known that he was dead, had already accepted it but this-this was proof. Tears shot out of her eyes and splashed on her shirt.
"Oh, there"s plenty of life left in him yet," Scapegrace announced. "There had better be." The half-deads shrunk away from the coffin and she understood intuitively. When they attacked her house they had been under Scapegrace"s orders to take both cops alive. Caxton so she could be turned into a vampire, and Arkeley so Scapegrace could torture him to death for what he"d done to Reyes and Congreve and Lares and Malvern and every vampire he could get his hands on.
Hazlitt touched the Fed"s throat. "He still has a pulse. It"s thready but it"s strong. And he"s definitely breathing. Unconscious, though." Scapegrace smiled. "So let"s wake him up." He stepped over to the dangling body and took Arkeley"s left hand in his own. He stroked the blood-stained skin for a moment, then lifted the hand to his mouth and with one quick motion bit off all four fingers down to the palm.
Fresh blood poured out of the wounds and mingled with the blood in the coffin. Arkeley"s eyes flicked open and a mewling, cat-like sound sagged out of his chest. He sucked in a horrible breath that caught on something broken inside of him and then he moved his lips as if he was trying to speak. Caxton couldn"t hear anything, though.
Scapegrace spat the severed fingers into Malvern"s coffin. They sank into the blood without a trace. "What"s that, Deputy? Speak up." "Spuh," Arkeley rasped. It sounded like two pieces of paper being rubbed against each other. "Spesh."
"Special Deputy," Caxton said for him. A kind of gruesome smile, but yes, an actual smile appeared on the Fed"s upside-down face.
"Cax," Arkeley sputtered. "Caxt-you. You knee." He took another grating breath. "Need to..." He couldn"t seem to finish his thought.
Scapegrace didn"t like it at all. He reached for Arkeley"s other hand. "Do you have something more to say?" he asked. "Some last kind word for your young friend here? You"ve failed her, old man. She"s going to die, you"re going to die. Everyone is going to die. You"ve failed everybody. Maybe you"d like to say you"re sorry. Go ahead. Whisper in her ear. We"ll all wait here patiently for you to think up your dying words."
Caxton leaned close, leaning against the edge of the coffin. Her shirt trailed in the blood but she didn"t care. "Jameson," she whispered. She"d never used his first name before and it felt strange in her mouth. "Please don"t apologize."
"Kneel," the Fed told her. It wasn"t what she was expecting. "Kneel before her." She recoiled from the words, from the very idea. She sought his eyes, wanting to let him know how angry she was that he would just surrender like that, that he would want her to embrace her doom so wholeheartedly. The light in his eyes was wrong, though. There was a distinct streak of defiance in the wrinkles around his eyes.
He"d never been wrong before. She dropped to her knees and lowered her head as if she were praying in church. She knew very well that it would take more than a simple prayer to save herself, though.
Down on her knees she saw something-a shadow tucked away in the near perfect darkness under the coffin. She saw the triangular shapes of the sawhorses and between them something else, something flat and angular. She squinted and saw that something had been secured to the bottom of the coffin with a silver X of duct tape. She squinted again and finally understood. It was a handgun. A Glock 23.
He must have put it there earlier, of course. Perhaps back on the night when Scapegrace and Reyes had come for Malvern and he had threatened to tear out her heart. He must have planned for this, just as he planned for every possible contingency. That was how you fought vampires-you never let them get the drop on you.
She glanced up at Arkeley"s face. He wasn"t giving anything away. She looked back at the pistol. She knew it held thirteen bullets-there would be nothing in the chamber. She looked up and around the room. "Scapegrace," she said.
The vampire stepped closer. He was no more than five feet away. "Hmm?" "Catch," she said, and tossed the skull into the air. Instantly its high unearthly shriek split the air. Scapegrace grabbed at it, his white hands up and reaching.
She tore the Glock free from the tape holding it to the bottom of the coffin. She worked the slide to chamber a round and saw the vampire"s red eyes go wide. His brain understood what was happening but his hands kept going for the skull. He caught it and crushed it unthinkingly between his pale fingers.
Fragments of yellow bone and clods of dirt swarming with worms trickled down the front of his shirt. The shrieking stopped. Caxton pressed the barrel of the pistol against his chest and fired. He fell backwards, his head smashing on the concrete floor. His eyes swiveled around to fix on her. "Pretty good," he said, and tried to get a knee under himself so he could rise and kill her. His limbs didn"t seem to want to cooperate. "s.h.i.t," he said, and fell back.
"Go! Get help!" Hazlitt shouted at the half-deads. One of them rushed for the far exit, for the darkness there. Caxton pivoted on her heel and snapped off a shot and the half-dead"s back erupted in a cloud of rotten flesh and torn clothing. She turned to shoot the next one but it was gone, already having fled the room. The third half-dead crouched down on the floor and hugged his knees.
She turned to Hazlitt next. She didn"t point her weapon at him-you never pointed a weapon at a human being until you were prepared to shoot them. He stepped behind a cart of medical instruments and raised his hands. He was too smart, she decided, to actually try something.
Scapegrace had rolled over onto his side and was pushing himself up into a sitting posture when she looked again. His eyes wouldn"t meet hers. "You nicked it," he said.
"What?" "You nicked my heart," he finished. He pushed upward with one knee but his arms were trembling. "That was pretty tricky." He got up on both knees. "You waited until I"d given all my blood to Her. You waited for the moment when I would be at my weakest. Pretty tricky. Listen," he said, rising to his feet. He lifted his hands into plain sight. "I"ll go quietly, okay? Don"t kill me." He wheezed as he spoke-had she punctured one of his lungs? She would have given anything for a chest x-ray just then. "Please," he continued. "You can lock me away forever, whatever you want. But please don"t kill me. I"m not even eighteen years old."
"Don"t," Arkeley breathed behind her. Don"t listen, he was trying to say. Arkeley. Was he still alive? He wouldn"t be for long unless she got him down and bandaged his wounds. She turned half around to look at him.
It was the opening Scapegrace had been waiting for. He flew across the room, a pale streak of lightning. Red blood erupted from Hazlitt"s throat and chin as the vampire tore off half of the doctor"s neck. Hazlitt gurgled out a scream. Caxton fired a round into the back of Scapegrace"s head, just by instinct. It didn"t even slow him down. She fired again into his back but he just redoubled his efforts, pressing his face and his rows of triangular teeth deep into the hole he"d made in Hazlitt"s neck.
Every drop of blood he drank would make Scapegrace stronger. He would be bulletproof in seconds. She needed to kill him instantly. Carefully, holding her breath, she lined up another shot and fired through the back of his t-shirt. The bullet tore through the vampire"s body and made him double over in howling pain. He staggered away from Hazlitt and fell across a rack of IV stands. They clattered to the floor as his hands clutched and clutched at nothing, at air. His legs shook like rubber bands and he collapsed to the floor and finally, convulsively, died.
Hazlitt took one last look around the room, his face and chest and the whole front of his body one continuous sheet of flowing blood. Then he slumped to the floor as well, just as dead as the vampire.
The half-dead in the corner jumped up and started running for the door. Caxton fired reflexively and missed him. She fired again and pulverized his left arm. The half-dead started whining in pain but he didn"t stop. She fired a third time and his whole body fell apart in pieces.
Part V - Malvern.
There"s a stake in your fat black heart / And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you. / They always knew it was you.
-Sylvia Plath, "Daddy"
"Five," Arkeley moaned. She shoved the handgun into the empty holster at her belt. It almost fit. With the step-ladder and with hands that shook badly she managed to lower Arkeley onto the floor. She found rolls of gauze and surgical tape in a rolling cart.
"Five," he said again, as if he"d just remembered something. His injuries were terrible. The half-deads had really worked him over-his skin was a maze of cuts, most of them inflamed, and the skin that wasn"t sliced or torn was bruised and even chewed in places. His eyes were swollen shut and his mouth was black and swollen with bruising. Then of course there were the fingers that Scapegrace had torn off. Caxton wrapped his left hand in gauze that instantly turned red with bright arterial blood. She wound more and more bandaging around the wound, tight but not too tight. At least it was his left hand. He would still have the use of his right hand. He could still shoot.
Except-he wasn"t doing any shooting anymore. Not that night, probably not for months. He couldn"t even sit up.
A cold flash went through her when she realized she had been expecting him to get up this whole time and reclaim his gun. She had really thought that her part was done and she could let him mop up.