32 Fangs: Laura Caxton Vampire Series: Book 5

by David Wellington

  Get up, she told herself.

  This was exactly what Glauer had been talking about. A normal person, a sane person, would stay down. Or flee.

  Get up. You aren’t really hurt. It’s just pain, and pain is all in your head.

  That nearly made her laugh. Of course it was all in her head—that was where he’d hit her. Giddiness, of course, was one of the symptoms of a nasty concussion.

  Stand up.

  She managed to get both feet under her. The whole world swayed while she stood perfectly, totally still. Or maybe it was the other way around.

  Move! Get after him!

  She realized then it wasn’t her own voice she heard in her head, telling her to do things. It was Laura’s voice. She wondered if Laura had heard Arkeley barking at her like that, even after Arkeley was dead.

  It would have been hard to disobey that voice. She didn’t even try. She rushed after the kid, heading deeper into the house. The kitchen door opened into a short hallway under the main stairs, and beyond that lay the front parlor. She saw a lot of broken furniture. Shards of glass littered the floor. She thought about the crash she’d heard, back when she was still thinking she could just knock on the door and he would answer. He must have gone to the window to see who it was, then tripped on the pieces of a broken armchair or something.

  The place was trashed. Did he really live here? It looked like there’d been a hell of a fight here at some point.

  Then she noticed that the broken furniture was covered in dust. The fight had been a long time ago.

  “Fucking just go away!” Simon shouted at her from overhead. She looked up at the stairs leading to the second floor. A trail of blood ran down from the top, staining the stair runner half the way down. She rushed forward to check it out, to see if he had wounded himself somehow. Maybe he was suicidal. But no, the blood was old. Really old, dried and crusted and left to sit for weeks, maybe far longer.

  She was a forensic expert—determining that only took a second.

  It was long enough. He came at her again with his frying pan, perhaps intending to finish the job he’d started. The heavy black pan swung through the air, aimed right at her face.

  Clara grabbed for it. Had she been a split second slower or faster, it might have smashed every bone in her hand. Instead she caught it just right, grabbing one greasy edge of the pan in such a way that she only needed to twist it around and he was forced to let go of its handle. She swung it behind her and let it clatter like a thunderbolt on the floor.

  He stared at her like he couldn’t understand what she’d just done. Like she’d mastered some bizarre martial art he’d never heard of. Pan fu or something.

  She didn’t waste time thanking God for making her so lucky. She just slugged him in the jaw until he fell over, then kicked him a few times when he was down for good measure.

  25.

  Well, that had gotten things off on a bad foot, she decided.

  She had really only intended to talk to Simon. Not beat the crap out of him. She had no idea how to properly subdue an antagonistic subject, and it showed. That course hadn’t been required at the academy, not for forensic specialists—just basic self-defense. Clara had been in a few fights in high school, and she’d had to scrap a little when she’d been held hostage during the prison riot. But she had never in her life struck someone with malice before.

  Yet when Simon went down, it had felt proper—right—to kick him. He had made himself her enemy, and that was how you treated enemies.

  When had she started thinking that way? The very idea terrified her, now that she’d calmed down. She thought about what Glauer had said. Then she pushed that thought away, because she had more important things to do just then than psychoanalyze herself.

  Simon never lost consciousness. In the movies one good tap to the back of the skull usually knocked out the bad guys. But human heads were actually built to resist just that kind of impact—it was why the skull was so thick, and why there were so many muscles in the neck. He did, however, stop fighting back as she hauled him back into the kitchen and then heaved him into a chair. He was, luckily, a skinny little runt or she would never have had the strength to do that.

  Rummaging in the kitchen drawers, she found a roll of duct tape and used that to secure him to the chair. It was dark in the kitchen—the power was out, probably turned off years ago—so she dug up some candles, too, and lit them so he could see who she was.

  In the silent refrigerator she found a warm bottle of soda. It wasn’t even diet, she saw with disgust. She poured herself a glass and sat down in a chair across from him and waited for him to ask the obvious questions.

  “Who are you?” he asked, his head rolling back and forth, just a little. He was going to have a nasty bruise on his jaw. It looked like his eyes were tracking, though.

  “Clara Hsu,” she said. “Laura Caxton’s girlfriend.”

  “S-s-seriously?” Then he laughed. “Actually, yeah. Never mind. You’re just as big a bitch as she is. I believe you. Did she send you to get me to marry that little girl?”

  Clara very much wanted to know what the hell he was talking about, but she didn’t want to give away how little she knew. “No,” she said. “Laura and I lost contact a while ago. I actually came to ask if you knew how to get her a message. I definitely didn’t mean for this to happen.”

  “I get it,” he said, and laughed again. A little more bitterly this time.

  “Get what?” Clara asked.

  “This is a setup. A trap. You work for the Feds, like my dad did. What was that asshole’s name? Forelock?”

  “Marshal Fetlock,” she said. “But no. I don’t work for him. Not anymore.”

  “Sure, whatever. You think I can take you to—I mean, you think I have some idea of where Caxton is. Which, for the record, I don’t. I know you want to arrest her again. And honestly? I would love to mess up her year. But she did save my life, you know. Like, a couple of times.”

  “She saved mine more,” Clara told him. “Simon, you can verify it if you want. I’ve been fired. I don’t work for Fetlock, or any other cop.”

  “So maybe if you hand them Caxton on a silver platter, you get your job back,” he said. Damn it, the kid was smart. Way too smart for this. He raised his head until it was almost fully upright and stared at her with pain-dulled eyes. “I want to see my lawyer, right now. I won’t say another word until I see my lawyer.”

  Clara’s hands squeezed into fists. She had the urge—the very strong urge—to hit him again. To do whatever it took to make him talk.

  Laura had given in to that urge once. She had tortured a sociopath named Dylan Carboy until he gave up what she wanted to know. And she had gone to jail for that.

  Fighting every natural instinct she had, Clara forced herself to calm down. She straightened out her hands and wiped her sweaty palms on the legs of her jeans. “I’m not a cop,” she said again. “Let me tell you something, Simon. I’m taking a huge risk here. I broke into your house. You hit me—with intent to kill—and I fought back. Now I’ve subdued you. I really don’t know which of us is in more trouble. We would probably both go to jail if we pressed charges on each other. Okay?”

  “Okay, what?”

  She gritted her teeth. “I just implicated myself in a crime. Right? A cop wouldn’t do that.”

  “Sure.”

  She stood up from her chair and poured herself some more soda. “You want some of this?”

  “I doubt you’re the kind who would drug me for information,” he granted her, “but I think I’ll pass just in case.”

  “What the fuck ever.” She drank in silence for a while. The soda was cloying and it made her teeth hurt. She felt it coating her tongue. Her head was really starting to ache from where he’d hit her with the frying pan. In a very short while she was going to have to lie down. Or maybe check herself into an emergency room, if she had a concussion. It was notoriously hard to tell, especially when you were diagnosing yourself. For the momen
t, though, adrenaline kept her going.

  “You seriously live here?” she asked.

  “I can’t afford anything else. I inherited this place from my mom.”

  “It’s a hole,” Clara told him.

  “Is this where you break down my resistance by insulting me?”

  “Seriously, whatever—but all the furniture’s busted up, there’s no power, and there’s a huge bloodstain on the stairs.” She saw him wince when she said that. “What?”

  “It’s … my mom’s blood. From when she died.”

  Clara felt her eyes protrude from their sockets in shock. “No way. No fucking way. Dude! From two years ago? Doesn’t that freak you out?”

  Simon lowered his head to his chest. “Every single time I see it. But when I try to clean it up I just start crying again.”

  “Seriously?”

  He sniffed, hard. In the candlelight it had been hard to tell, but she saw now that tears had rolled down his cheeks and splashed on his shirt. “It’s been … tough,” he said. “My whole … family. Just—just all at once. I was seeing a shrink for a long time, but I couldn’t afford to keep going. I can’t really afford anything anymore.”

  “Oh my God. You poor kid,” Clara said. “Don’t you have a job?”

  “No. I’m living off of my credit cards. There was some life insurance, I mean, my parents had some insurance, but most of the settlement is gone.”

  And then—he just cried. For a long time he said nothing, no matter what she said or did. He just sat there, crying, completely shut down. It was like he’d turned into an infant and had lost the power of speech altogether.

  Crap, she thought. Glauer had definitely been right, hadn’t he? And Fetlock, too. She’d become just like Laura. Instantly floodgates of compassion opened up in her again, and she could barely control the force of her sympathy. She’d hurt this kid—really hurt him. The guilt and horror threatened to overwhelm her. “Jeez. I kind of want to give you a hug right now.”

  “If you come over here I’ll start screaming.”

  Clara knew he was telling the truth. “Okay. I’ll stay over here. But really, I feel for you. I do. I know what it’s like to lose somebody you care about.”

  “You mean Caxton? Nobody killed her.”

  “No. They just dragged her away to jail. And then she broke out and I haven’t seen or heard from her since. Maybe it’s not the same. But it really hurts.”

  “You really got fired?” he asked, sniffling.

  “Yeah. Just yesterday. It sucks.”

  He nodded. “I was working, for a while, as a medical lab assistant. Just, you know. Washing out beakers and test tubes. Sweeping up. But every time—every time I opened the lab fridge and saw the blood samples, I would have to go and get drunk. And it was a lab that handled a lot of blood samples. So they fired me, too.”

  “It feels like the worst kind of rejection,” Clara told him. “Like you failed at being a human being, you know?”

  “I do,” he said.

  There were tears on her own cheeks then.

  “I’m so, so sorry about hitting you. I just didn’t know what else to do. I need to see Laura so badly,” she said, not caring if it was the right thing to say or not. “I’m—I’m not going to hug you. Not if you don’t want me to. But I want to come over there and cut you out of that duct tape. Is that okay?”

  “Sure,” he said. “And maybe—maybe we’ll talk about the hug.”

  [ 1780 ]

  “I’ve done it,” Easling said, his breath coming in fast spurts as his fat body heaved in guilt. Blood stained his hands and whiskey stank in the air between them. “Justinia, I’ve done it, I’ve … I’ve killed her, it was easy, just like you said it would be, simplicity itself, easier than I thought, easier than—than—my God, I’ve wanted this so long, I’ve dreamed of it! And now it’s done, it’s done and I—I don’t feel guilt. Not a bit of it, I refuse to—to feel any—”

  With one white finger across his lips she hushed him. He’d done well. The knife that had butchered that shrew of a wife lay forgotten behind him in the doorway. She could see the blood glowing on it as if it had caught fire. How badly she wanted that blood … but Easling had not yet seen her true form. He’d never watched her lap up the spilt blood of a victim. Seeing that now might turn him from the path she’d laid out so carefully.

  One did not give up the game until all the betting was done, until the last card had been played. One more trump remained.

  In silence she held his eyes. When he looked at her he saw only the beautiful redhead she’d created for him, with two good eyes in her comely head. It didn’t matter. The curse could be passed on regardless.

  He calmed as she stared into his soul. His body quieted and his breathing became regular and gentle. He was as a man asleep and dreaming, and she let him have a moment of peace, of forgetfulness.

  I will never leave ye, she told him without words. She let the thought slip through his head like smoke through the chimney of a lantern, leaving nothing but soot behind. I will protect ye from all who design against ye. I will teach ye so much. In return I ask only a little. And to seal our compact, I give ye this gift.

  When the curse entered him he sighed like a man relieved of a great sickness. When Vincombe had given it to her, she had felt almost nothing at all, but for Easling it was a kind of grace and a sexual thrill at the same time. His own blood rushed to his cheeks and his forehead, and she had to fight herself not to take him then, not to slaughter him and drink deep.

  No. Not now. Not when there was so much more to be gained.

  Now, she went on. Now, ye must do a little something for me. Not so very much. It won’t hurt. I promise.

  His chin bobbed up and down as he assented. Then he turned away from her, breaking her gaze. She fell back across the bed in utter exhaustion. It had drained her to pass on the curse. But it was done. She let the orison go, let her body take on its true shape. It was alright. He wasn’t looking at her—and when he did again, when he rose and looked upon her next, the orison wouldn’t have worked on him anymore, anyway.

  He rose to his feet and staggered to the doorway. He was so drunk he put up no resistance at all. Grunting as he stooped, he took up the knife again. The same one he’d used to kill his wife. He did not hesitate or flinch as he drove its point deep into the long artery in his thigh. He waggled the blade back and forth for a while, then pulled it free and let it clatter once more to the floor.

  Outside in the street the life of Manchester went on. Wagons rumbled past over boards laid down across potholes. A dog growled at rats in the alley, while newspaper boys shouted out teasing hints of the great events of the day. In recent years the people of the city had grown complacent, forgetful of the monsters in their midst. Justinia had lacked the energy to keep them properly afraid.

  It would not be very much longer until they remembered, and cowered as they should. Until she had her new knight in pale armor at her side, to help her, to bring to her the blood she required.

  Easling collapsed in the doorway, his back against its jamb. He made low sobbing sounds she did not attempt to understand. His blood flowed out in a great pool across the wooden floor.

  Eventually he closed his eyes, and she dared to slither off the bed. To crawl across the floor like a snake, with her tongue flicking at his spilled life. She had to get it all up while it was still warm.

  26.

  Clara was waiting in the driveway when Glauer pulled up to the Arkeley house.

  He got out of his car and just stood there, as if waiting for her to explain why she’d chosen this path—and why she’d called him, why she’d forced him to come along on this crazy ride with her. He’d given her a chance to walk away. She had refused it, and now they were both committed.

  There’d never been any question he would help her. He was still Glauer, after all, and he fought vampires just like Clara. Just like Caxton.

  Clara had been very worried, however, that he would judge h
er. Condemn her for making the wrong choice and putting both their lives in danger. Not that he would ever say anything—but he had other, subtler ways to show disapproval. She had been dreading the moment when he sighed, for instance. Or when he looked at her the same way her father had looked at her when she came out to him. All it would take would be for Glauer to frown at her once and she would shrivel in embarrassment, in guilt.

  He didn’t sigh. He didn’t give her a look of disappointment. He didn’t even frown. And that was good enough. He’d given her a choice, and she’d taken it, and that was as far as he was going to go, emotionally.

  She nearly wept in gratitude.

  “What are you doing out here in this heat, waiting for me?” he asked. It sounded more like concern than a judgment.

  “I wanted to make sure you could find the place okay. And the doorbell doesn’t work,” she explained.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever forget how to get to this place,” Glauer told her. He took a long look one way up the street, then the other, as if he was worried he’d been followed. It was unlikely. He was driving his own personal car and was wearing his off-duty clothes, including a baseball cap pulled down low over a huge pair of mirrored sunglasses. He still looked like a cop, of course—no disguise was going to cover up his broad shoulders or his bristly mustache. But at least no one would be able to identify him by sight. Clara knew he hadn’t needed to be warned to leave his phone at home, or to avoid police attention on the way over.

  When he’d satisfied himself he was unobserved, he looked up at the house for the first time. She couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses, so she couldn’t be sure what he was feeling. He’d told her once before that the night of Astarte Arkeley’s death was the night he’d realized Laura wasn’t human anymore. That she’d become a kind of monster herself. “Though,” he’d said at the time, “I was pretty damned glad this monster was on our side.”