A fear leapt on her then, not an emotion but a living, breathing thing that crawled around her shoulders and neck as if looking for some place to hide. Caxton wanted to run. She wanted to scream. She tried to turn around and found that her body was completely paralyzed by fear.
Caxton stopped in her tracks and flicked off the light. Slowly she tried to breathe again. It pretty much worked.
"Laura." Wind in some trees, maybe, making branches rub together. Yeah, sure. Trees. Maybe the first time she could have believed that. Through sheer dint of repet.i.tion she knew what it had to be. It was a vampire and the vampire was playing with her like a cat playing with a wounded starling. The skin on her arms erupted in goose pimples.
It might be Malvern. The bath of blood might have given the moribund vampire enough strength to call out like that from the other side of the sanatorium. Or it could be the other vampire, the complete unknown.
A cold breeze brushed across Caxton"s face, ruffling her hair. There had been no wind in the pa.s.sage before-either someone had opened a door somewhere or-or-
She couldn"t help it. She had to know. She flicked on the flashlight just in time to see a pale hand flash away from her, dripping red. She gasped in horror and spun around, trying to find where the owner of the hand had gone. She couldn"t see anything. She flicked the light off again and brought her weapon down to low ready. Three.
A second pa.s.sed and then another and nothing happened.
Caxton wanted to turn the light back on. She told herself she was only
handicapping herself by not having it on. Vampires could see living people in the dark. They could see their blood. She imagined the vampire at that very moment looking at her. Would the vampire see her frightened face or just the blood surging inside her veins? She imagined what that must look like: the branching network of her blood vessels as if they"d been carefully surgically removed and then hung from the ceiling by wires. A human-enough shape, but empty, a throbbing tracery, bright red jagged lines pulsing tremulously in the cold air.
The vampire had to be within striking distance. At any moment he or she could pounce and tear Caxton apart. What was the hold-up? Standing there waiting for her own destruction, imagining the pain to come, was almost worse than actually dying.
She flicked on the light and held it straight out, daring the vampire to show itself. And the vampire obliged, stepping right into the path of the beam.
Thirty feet away, or maybe farther, the light showed her little more than a pale human outline. The vampire wore a white lacy dress that looked oddly familiar to Caxton, as if she"d seen it in a magazine or something. The colorless hands were full of blood.
Caxton had seen this apparition before. In the car, when she had pa.s.sed out because she was so frightened. She had seen this vampire with b.l.o.o.d.y hands, beckoning, calling to her. Now the hands lifted, palms held out as if to catch Caxton"s light. The red fell away through the fingers. It wasn"t blood at all, Caxton saw. It was hair, clumps of short red hair.
"It all came out at once, Pumpkin," the vampire said, moving closer. She moved so easily she might have been skating across the floor. "I thought you might like to see it one last time before it"s gone."
Caxton"s bones hardened in place. She felt as if she were being fossilized. The sound that creaked up out of her wasn"t a name, it was the noise rocks make when they freeze in the winter and crack and split open. By the time it reached Caxton"s lips, though, that noise sounded an awful lot like Deanna"s name.
Deanna touched her mouth, her chin. Her fingers trailed down across Caxton"s throat and then wove themselves around her belt. In the blue, uncertain light of the tiny flashlight Deanna didn"t look half bad. Even if she was undead.
"It"s good to see you," she said, very softly.
"Dee," she sighed. "Dee. You can"t be. You didn"t-you didn"t." "I didn"t kill myself?" Deanna asked. Her voice had that growling quality
they got. Her skin was the color of skim milk. She could probably tie a steel bar in knots with her bare hands. But she was Deanna, alive again. Or almost.
"I broke that window with my own hands. I cut myself up." Deanna"s eyes wandered upward to Caxton"s. "I guess that counts," Deanna said. Under the growl there was a breathy quality to the voice. A s.e.xy kind of flutter. It made Caxton"s skin itch.
It would be technically incorrect to say that Caxton thought Deanna was actually alive. She knew better than that. Or rather, her brain knew better. Her body had its own ideas and its own memories. It remembered the shape of Deanna, the shape of Deanna when she was alive. It remembered her smell.
"How could you do this to us? You know what I am. What I"ve been working on," Caxton said. She stepped closer and touched Deanna"s strangely lumpy jaw. "You"re so cold," she said. She leaned forward and touched her forehead to the vampire"s forehead. They used to do that, when they were alone,
and things were quiet. They used to press up against each other. It felt pretty much the same this time. "I didn"t have a choice. I mean-except I did. Congreve." The vampire closed her eyes and pressed her hands against her toothy mouth. She shook with weeping.
Caxton couldn"t stand to see it. "Shh," she said. "Shh." She put her arms around Deanna"s slender form. She wanted to press her tight until she warmed up again. Until she was a real girl again. A sob died in the middle of Caxton"s throat. It didn"t make it up to the surface. "How do you know about Congreve?"
Deanna pushed Caxton away. She used just enough of her strength to get out of the embrace, but underneath Caxton could feel just how much more power Deanna had if she chose to use it. It was like being shoved gently away by a pickup truck. Deanna wouldn"t hurt Caxton, though. She would never harm her lover. Caxton could feel it in the way Deanna touched her, in the way they moved around each other.
"They"re going to let us be together forever. That wasn"t possible otherwise."
Caxton shook her head. "Forever. Sure. Forever like one of them. Have you seen Malvern?" Deanna laughed and it almost sounded like her old laugh. "Of course I have. She called me here." She was gone then, away from Caxton"s body and that felt wrong. Deanna sat down on one of the bedframes and hugged herself. Caxton kneeled down to bring their faces closer together. "Justinia is the one who made this possible. I was going to die, Pumpkin. I was going to die and I didn"t know how else to save myself."
"Shh," Caxton said, and she reached with her thumbs to dry Deanna"s tears. What leaked from the corners of the vampire"s eyes wasn"t water, though, but dark blood. Caxton wiped her fingers on her pants.
"Maybe you"d better tell me how this happened," Caxton said. Yes. That was good. She had to start thinking like a cop again. But it was so hard with Deanna right there, a Deanna who still moved and spoke and wept.
"Congreve was going to kill me. It wasn"t anything personal. He was just in the neighborhood, hunting and he found me. He came to the house one night when you were out at work. The dogs started singing and the light in the shed went on. I went to see what was happening. I grabbed the long screwdriver from the toolkit and I went back there and I said, "Whoever"s in there, you"d better f.u.c.k off out of here. My girlfriend"s a cop." But nothing happened. So I went to the door of the shed and that"s when he grabbed me."
"Congreve?" Caxton asked. But how was that possible? She and Arkeley had killed Congreve long before Deanna"s accident.
"Yes. His hands were really rough with calluses and they held me so tight. He told me I was going to die and I started screaming and begging. He told me to shut up and I tried. I really tried. He asked me if I was the artist, if the blankets in the shed were mine and I said no, because I thought maybe he was some crazy religious guy or something and he wanted to kill me for my art. He made me look into his eyes then and I saw he wasn"t human at all. I couldn"t lie to him then, not even if I wanted to. I said yes."
"Oh, G.o.d," Caxton moaned. "He hypnotized you. He transmitted the curse to you and you couldn"t even know what was happening." Deanna shrugged. "I don"t like to think of it that way. He was an artist too, he said. A musician. He really got my work, Laura. That has to count for something, right? He said talent like mine shouldn"t be wasted. He asked me if I wanted to live or die. Just like that. You know, I actually had to think about it." Deanna looked down at her hands. She picked at the front of the dress. Caxton realized, suddenly, where she"d seen it before. It was the Best Person dress that Deanna had worn to her brother"s wedding. Had the Purfleets buried her in it?
"He made you like him. You must have said you wanted to live," Caxton said, trying to get back on track.
Deanna nodded. "Then he went away. And I started having those dreams. The dreams about you bleeding to death."
Caxton crab-walked backwards and sat down on a bedframe so she could face Deanna. They were two women, two living women sitting on beds, their knees almost touching. Two women just having a conversation. That was all, she told herself.
Deanna lowered her face until her voice was m.u.f.fled by her folded arms. "I fought the curse, as much as I could. I tried not to sleep. It"s in your dreams that they make you hurt yourself. But that"s the merciful part, isn"t it? You don"t feel a thing as long as you"re dreaming. I wish I"d known what it was going to be like so I wouldn"t have been so afraid. I"m really sorry, Laura. I"m sorry I got so scared. Otherwise I wouldn"t have told them about you."
"What are you talking about?" Caxton asked, trying to keep her voice gentle.
"I told them I couldn"t do it alone. I couldn"t be one of them if because it would mean leaving you behind. Mr. Reyes said he had the answer for that, though. He said they could take both of us. He really seemed to like the idea."
No, it hadn"t happened like that. It couldn"t have. Caxton felt like she"d gotten to the end of a jigsaw puzzle and found the picture didn"t match the cover of the box. She shook her head. "That doesn"t make sense, Deanna. Your story is all mixed up."
"What do you mean?" the vampire asked.