"Jesus," Clara sighed. "I feel that way half the time."
Arkeley ignored her. "The other one. With the mangled ears. Do you have a name?" he asked.
Caxton thought about it for a second. She bit her lip. It suddenly occurred to her for no reason at all that Clara trusted her and probably wouldn"t even try to stop her if she just reached forward and grabbed the steering wheel and give it a quick yank to the right. They were driving along the wooded bank of a dry streambed that ran maybe thirty feet down. The New Beetle would crumple like a soda can when it hit the rocks down there.
She sat back in her seat and pressed her knuckles against the sides of her head and pushed the thought away. It wasn"t her thought, though it had felt like any of the million other things in her head. It was Reyes, the part of Reyes that had colonized her brain. His curse was still trying to destroy her.
"Scapegrace," she said, coughing out the name. She had to fight to make Reyes let it go but once she had the name she had the whole story. "Kevin Scapegrace. He was sixteen years old. Tall but skinny, too scared of his high school to get decent grades. The kids at school picked on him. One of them, an older boy, raped Kevin in the showers during gym cla.s.s. Kevin was pretty sure that made him gay and he couldn"t live with himself anymore." Caxton"s mouth hardened into a tight snarl. "He"d swallowed a bottle of aspirin when Reyes found him. Reyes sat with him while the half-deads raided a drugstore. They brought back a bottle of Valium, and Kevin took that, too. Kevin didn"t really understand what he was being offered. He accused Reyes of raping him, too and now he hates what he"s become."
She looked up and saw Arkeley staring at her. Clara kept glancing back over her shoulder and her eyes were tougher to meet. They were full of confusion and worry and a little fear.
"Reyes told you all that, before you killed him?" Arkeley asked, softly, as if he knew the answer already.
"No," Caxton replied. She suddenly wished Clara wasn"t there. She licked her lips. "No. After."
Arkeley nodded patiently. d.a.m.n him. He was going to make her say it out loud. He was going to make her say it in front of Clara. "And how is that possible, Trooper?"
Caxton closed her eyes. "Because he"s still inside my head."
Clara drove them into the electrical substation, the same place they had originally thought Reyes was using as a lair. It might have been a completely different place the second time. For one thing she arrived in a car about half as big as the Granola Roller, with no armor and very few weapons. For another thing she knew the place was empty. Empty of everything except ghosts, anyway.
Clara stayed in the car while Arkeley lead her into the depths of the substation. The day was starting to cloud up and the air had a bitter chill to it. It might snow soon, she thought. As they walked between the switch towers Arkeley gave her a moment to pull her coat tighter and then he started in with the questions.
"You can feel him in there? Even though he"s dead?" She shrugged, pulling her collar close around her neck. "It"s difficult to describe. There"s a chunk of him in my head. I get thoughts that I know belong to him, not to me. I can access his memories as if they were my own."
"Does he tell you to do things? Do you hear his voice?" She almost tripped over her own shadow. No, she didn"t hear Reyes" voice. But she had heard Arkeley"s, even when he wasn"t there. She wasn"t sure if that made her crazy. "He"s... pa.s.sive. It"s like he"s gone to sleep in there. Unless I want something from him he keeps to himself. If I do want something, like when you asked me about Kevin Scapegrace, then he wakes up and we fight. I"m winning, so far."
Arkeley looked like he could have spat. He didn"t, he was far too cultured for that, he knew. "When Scapegrace and Malvern are dead we"ll take you back to the Polders. They"ll know how to get him out of there."
"Seriously?" she asked. The offer was almost kind, something she didn"t expect from Arkeley.
"When Malvern is dead, yes."
She frowned. "I thought you had a court ruling saying you couldn"t just kill her. She can"t be executed."
"Not unless she breaks the law. It"s hard to murder anyone when you can"t climb out of your own coffin. If I can get some evidence that she conspired with Reyes and Congreve and Scapegrace, though-if I can pin Bitumen Hollow on her, do you think any judge in this state will refuse me that pleasure?"
Caxton frowned. She felt a lot of clues fall into place, as if jigsaw puzzle pieces had fallen out of the box and landed perfectly aligned with each other, their tabs already intersecting. She had something. "That"s what this has all been about," she said.
"Don"t oversimplify things."
"Oh, I think that"s your job, and I wouldn"t dare to step on your toes. For twenty years you"ve kept this case perfectly black and white. No matter what it takes, no matter who says not to, you"ve always wanted to kill Malvern. To
finish the job you started in Pittsburgh." He didn"t stop her. She went on. "You can"t stand the fact that she survived. That you had a chance to destroy her but through simple chemistry she just didn"t burn as fast as the others. You can"t stand the fact that you failed. When the court ruled on her, when they said you couldn"t kill her-that ate you alive, didn"t it? You have a wife. Vesta Polder said you had a wife. Do you have kids?"
"Two. My son"s in college, up at Syracuse. My daughter"s an exchange student. She"s in France." His face fell. He wasn"t even looking at her-his eyes were turned up as if he were reading a note scribbled on the inside of his skull. "No," he said, "Belgium."
"You really had to work for that." She was being cruel but she figured Arkeley could take it. "This case is all you have. It"s your life"s work. That"s why you"re such a harda.s.s about it. Why you don"t let anybody help you, because you won"t share the eventual glory."
"I work mostly alone, that"s true. It keeps other people from being killed. If you had slept in yesterday the way you were supposed to-"
She stopped him. "What"s your son"s major? At Syracuse."
He didn"t try to answer. He didn"t turn to upbraid her. He just trudged onward, toward the switch house. "You"ll do just about anything to get the goods on Malvern, won"t you?" "Yes," he said. "Anything." He pulled open the door of the switch house as if he wished he could tear it off its hinges. He turned on a flashlight and handed it to her. He had one of his own. They stepped inside, into almost perfect darkness. Only a diffuse yellow glow came in through the mullioned windows, a dull radiance that illuminated nothing. Caxton played her flashlight beam over ma.s.sive constructions of coiled copper wire and varnished wooden switches as long and thick as her arm. They were as ornate as bedposts. They had to be the original circuit breakers from when the substation was opened a century earlier. "What are we doing in here?" she asked. She shone her light on the floor and saw a trapdoor set in the cement. Just like the one at the steel mill. She didn"t want to go down through it. She really didn"t want to. "What"s down there?"
He pointed his flashlight at her face. "You tell me," he said, his voice totally blank.
Maybe he was just being cruel to get back at her for questioning his private life. Maybe he really wanted to know.
"We were right, weren"t we?" she asked. "Reyes did use this place as a lair. Before he moved to the mill." That much was guess work. For anything more she needed to ask the vampire in her head. She sighed and closed her eyes. Arkeley moved his light away and she was in total darkness. She reached down into the darkest corner of her brain-and felt a pale hand grab for her. It was just a metaphor, though, and she easily slipped out of the ghost"s grasp. "He spent a lot of lonely nights down there. Thinking. Planning. This is where he decided to trap one of us. Malvern didn"t like the idea, but he thought it would be funny. He also knew that you and I were responsible for Congreve"s death." She opened her eyes, but all she saw were colorful spills of light, phosphor afterimages. The things the eye sees when there is no other input. "He told Malvern he wanted to catch one of us and take us apart. It would be funny, and it would make them safe again. I imagine he probably would have preferred to get you, since you were the one who did the actual killing."
"Imagine again," Arkeley said. His clothing rustled as he moved in the dark. He lifted the trapdoor and she heard echoes roll up from below. There was a considerably large s.p.a.ce down there.
She pointed her light down the stairs and forced herself to proceed. At the bottom she stood in a wide s.p.a.ce full of damp air that smelled of mildew and decaying leaves and something fouler but fainter. She swung her beam around and saw bodies.
Dead bodies-hundreds of them. It was worse than the hunting camp. These bodies hung from the ceiling by their feet, their arms dangling down, water running across their fingers to the floor. They were fixed to the walls, held in place with giant iron staples that had rusted over time. They crouched in the corners as if hiding from the light, as if they would raise their rotting arms to protect themselves if she approached. They were wired in place, held in position.
In the center of the room a pair of bodies took pride of place. They were clearly meant as the masterpiece of the collection of bodies. They were both female and their skin was pale white, mottled with dark spots where fluids had gathered after they died. One was missing an arm but otherwise they were still intact. Their hair had been yanked out of their scalps. They were locked in an intimate embrace and they were kissing.
No, no they weren"t. Caxton moved closer for a better look. They weren"t just kissing. Their lower faces had been fused together, the lips and teeth cut away so they were like Siamese twins joined at the mouth.
"Tell me if I"m wrong. But I think he wanted to capture you, specifically," Arkeley said. "I think you turned him on." The sight failed to make her sick. She wanted to throw up, but her body wasn"t in the mood. Her emotions weren"t altogether her own. She wanted to have a visceral reaction to that much death. Reyes wouldn"t let her. Down at the bottom of her brain he looked out at his own creations, his re-creations, and he was proud of what he"d achieved. Whatever he felt, she felt too. Seeing the bodies brought him back to life, a little. He curled inside her, excited to see his old home again. "I need to get out of here," she told Arkeley. Not because she wanted to flee in revulsion. Because she kind of liked what she was seeing.
"What was Reyes planning? What was his next step?" Arkeley asked her. He wanted the vampire to wake up, to surge inside of her. This identification between herself and Reyes was just another tool for him. He thought it would make it easier for her to remember Reyes" plans. And it did, though the plans she recalled were from an earlier time. From when he"d first learned of Laura Caxton"s existence.
He had targeted her. She didn"t have to fight at all for that piece of information. Reyes wanted her to play back that particular memory, as if it were a favorite record. Reyes had specifically gone after her, Pennsylvania State Trooper Laura Caxton, regardless of what he might have told Malvern. He hadn"t really cared about removing the vampire killers. He"d wanted her, her body. When he had learned she was a lesbian, when his half-deads had gone to her house and seen her sleeping with Deanna (oh G.o.d, what had they seen? How many nights had they stood outside the windows and watched the two of them sleep?), he had become s.e.xually aroused.
Vampires, she now knew, weren"t supposed to think of living humans as s.e.xual beings. It was like a human wanting to f.u.c.k a cow. But Reyes had become obsessed with her. He had remembered all those men"s magazines he used to read when he was alive. He had always liked the girl-on-girl portfolios. They"d always got him so hot. He would imagine them sucking each other off, desperate for a real man to come along and show them what they were missing. If he made her a vampire then perhaps he could f.u.c.k her. Perhaps she would want to f.u.c.k him.
That memory, finally, was enough to make her sick. "Let me out of here," she screamed. She spun around and the bodies looked back at her, their dead eyes all focused on her face. How they had worshipped her. Or feared her, yes, they all feared her, it was the last thing to pa.s.s through their faces, that fear. Reyes had loved that.
"What was his next move?" Arkeley asked. He stood in front of the stairs. "Was he going to make more vampires? Was he going to wait until he had four, to bring blood to Malvern? Where is Scapegrace right now?"
She shook her head. "Let me out," Caxton said. The bones. The bones of the dead-death itself. Death called to her, her own death, suicide, the death of others, murder. Reyes stretched inside her brain like a predatory cat, languid, pleased with what he had created. No, there was no creation in that cellar. Pleased with what he had destroyed. "Let me out! Get away from me," Caxton howled, unsure who she was talking to-the Fed or the vampire. "Leave me alone!"
Up above ground, leaning against the side of Clara"s Volkswagen, Caxton rubbed at her face over and over, trying to make sense of things. She wanted to throw up but she kept thinking she would vomit up clotted blood, just as Reyes had. She wanted to sit down but she knew if she did she wouldn"t ever want to stand up again. "The only reason I"m alive," she said, muttering to herself, "is because I happened to fit into some vampire"s kink. Not just any vampire. A depraved vampire." She tried to stop breathing. Her body freaked out, panicked, made her hyperventilate. What had made her think to stop breathing?
Vampires didn"t breathe, of course. They were dead things and they didn"t need to breathe. Living things, like state troopers, needed to breathe a lot.
"His curse is alive," she sighed. "His curse is alive in me."
Clara pushed a paper bag into her hands. Caxton realized that Clara must have been talking to her but she couldn"t hear her. She couldn"t hear anything. She breathed into the bag and slowly, slowly, she calmed down. She felt things slow down all around her. She felt the air on her skin and smelled fruit, maybe strawberries.
She took the bag away from her face. "Strawberries?" she asked.
Clara"s forehead wrinkled. "Strawberries and kiwi fruit, and a cup of unsweetened yogurt. How... how did you know what I had for breakfast?" The look on her face verged on fear.
Caxton waved it away. "I"m not psychic." She crinkled the bag in her fingers. "I just have a good nose." They laughed together. That helped. It helped an awful lot, actually.