“Ahum,” Urie Polder replied. The look on his face said he wished he didn’t.
Darnell nodded, briefly. “Took me out as a child, took me to see an old woman who lived down the bottom of a hollow much like this one. Told her I needed to learn the old ways. She plucked the eye right from my head, gave me this one. Hurt so much I turned away from that profession of Pow-Wowing, never wanted to learn more. But already I could see the things others don’t.”
Clara was starting to understand, though she didn’t get the details very well—nor did she particularly want to. “His eye can see through your spells.”
“See through just about anything unnatural, ahum,” Urie Polder confirmed. He turned to look at Fetlock for the first time. “How long you been spying, sir?”
“Long enough. Trooper Darnell has been living on your ridges for almost a month, evading your wards and learning your ways. Still. Ms. Caxton nearly caught him one night. I have to admit I’m impressed. I’ve seen Darnell sneak up on a deer in a forest clearing so smoothly the animal didn’t know he was there. Not until he had his hands around the deer’s throat.”
Clara fought down a wave of nausea. She too had to admit she was impressed—by Fetlock. As long as she’d known him the Fed had never had any use for magic or the more esoteric bits of vampire lore, considering science a far more useful tool in tracking his subjects. Caxton must have been counting on that attitude, though, when she came to Urie Polder for protection—she must have believed that Urie Polder’s magic would protect her from Fetlock’s more modern forms of policework. So Fetlock had made the necessary leap and found himself a magician of his own. “If you had a man inserted here the whole time,” she asked, “then why did you need me to lead you here?”
“I didn’t,” Fetlock told her.
“No? But—wait a minute, no, you followed us in—you followed us …”
Fetlock frowned at her, as if to suggest this wasn’t the time for such a discussion. But then he shrugged and answered. “Trooper Darnell was able to bypass the magical protections around this place, but he couldn’t disable them. I knew exactly where Caxton was this whole time, but I couldn’t raid this place without setting off every alarm in the Hollow. The witchbillies would have been ready for me and we would have had a bloodbath on our hands. No, I had to wait for Caxton to lower her defenses. To be so distracted she couldn’t prepare for my attack.”
“And we … gave you that opportunity,” Clara said.
“Hardly,” Fetlock said, rolling his eyes. “No. Caxton didn’t want you here. She did everything she could to keep you away. But there was one person she needed, one person she would let inside. When he came to her she lowered all her barriers and made it possible for me to stage this raid.”
“Who are you talking about?” She glanced sideways at Glauer.
“Simon Arkeley,” Fetlock told her.
38.
“Simon?” Clara gasped. “You knew Laura would approach Simon?”
“I know everything Simon does. I implanted him with an RFID device so I can monitor his movements at all times.”
“What’s an RFID?” Urie Polder asked.
“It stands for Radio Frequency Identification,” Clara explained. “In this case it would be a tiny metallic chip, about the size of a grain of rice. You can inject it through a needle under somebody’s skin, and they’d probably never even notice it was there. It doesn’t have any working parts on its own, it’s just a little scrap of magnetic material that can hold a few bits of data. But that data can be read remotely by another machine that knows to look for it. Most commercial RFID chips only have a range of a few feet, but apparently the Feds have some way of reading them at longer distances.”
“I’m able to track him by satellite,” Fetlock agreed.
“How did you do it?” Clara asked.
“The chip was implanted when he was in the hospital, recovering from the wounds his father gave him. After Caxton pulled him out of the Centralia mine. He was told it was an injection of morphine to help with the pain, and never guessed what was really happening.”
“No way,” Clara said, despite herself. “That’s just … evil.”
No—worse than that. It was calculating. Cold-blooded.
Fetlock didn’t bat an eyelash at her accusation. “I’ve had updates about his movements every day since. Pretty boring stuff, really, until one day when his blip disappeared from our screens—the first time he came here. It seems even satellites can’t see through the magical fog over this valley. It took us far too long to realize what was happening. We assumed it had to be an equipment malfunction, or that he had discovered the chip and removed it himself. It was Trooper Darnell who figured out what had actually happened and brought it to my attention. After that, well, I grew much more interested in keeping tabs.”
Clara ran her hands through her hair. “But—but why? Why Simon? Why do this in the first place? He’s just a kid. He’s not even—I mean, he’s kind of crazy. What made you think Caxton would ever reach out to him?”
“He’s a survivor,” Fetlock explained. “Vampires have a tendency to go after the ones who got away. They like to tidy up loose ends. Ever since I became involved in vampire cases, I’ve been putting chips in every survivor I could find. Just as a precaution. This time it turned out to be worth it.”
Clara had nothing to say to that. She was too stunned.
It was Glauer who asked the obvious question. “Isn’t that illegal? That’s more intrusive than wiretapping, even.”
“Quite,” Fetlock admitted. “But we’re well past the point of legal niceties now. If it means stopping Malvern, even I can learn to bend a little.”
“But—surely you don’t want to taint this capture. If the court finds you used illegal methods to bring her back, it could cause all kinds of problems for you, and—and—”
Fetlock wasn’t looking at her. He was ignoring her words. He had sat back on the bench and folded his hands in his lap.
As if he was just waiting patiently for her to finish, so he could get back to what he really wanted to talk about.
“Unless—you didn’t come here for Caxton,” Clara said, piecing it together.
Glauer cleared his throat. Trying to get her attention.
She ignored him. “If you didn’t come here for Caxton, then … why?”
Fetlock waited until she was done. Then he looked Urie Polder straight in the eye. “I’ve been forthcoming here. More so than I usually would. Because I need your help, Mr. Polder. In exchange for that help, I can make sure your daughter has a decent life. If you refuse, I can send her away for a long time. Juvenile detention facilities aren’t as bad as adult prisons, they say. She’ll be given a proper education, and even be taught a few useful skills to help her find work when she’s released at eighteen. She could learn meat cutting. Or HVAC repair. There’s always a need for skilled machinists. Maybe that’s all you want for her.”
“Down my part of the world,” Urie Polder said, flexing his wooden shoulder, “folk don’t threaten each other’s children. T’aint done, ahum.”
“Your part of the world no longer exists,” Fetlock pointed out. “I’ve just conquered it.”
“Father,” Patience said, “don’t listen to this man. He—”
“Hush now, girl,” Urie Polder said. “Alright, Mr. Fetlock, you put the scare into me. Now tell me what you want.”
“My name,” Fetlock said, straightening his tie, “is Marshal Fetlock. That’s how you are supposed to address me.”
Urie Polder’s eyes narrowed. He strained briefly against his handcuffs. Either in a vain effort to intimidate, or simply because they were uncomfortable. He let out a long exhalation of breath that was not quite a sigh. “Marshal Fetlock, what in blazes do you want?”
“There are certain wards and protections set up in a ring around this valley,” Fetlock said, without so much as a nod of thanks. “You and Caxton spent quite a bit of time on them. Trooper Darnell was only abl
e to circumvent them due to his unique gifts—and because they weren’t specifically meant to keep him out. They were meant to keep away vampires and half-deads.”
“Unnatural folk in general, ahum.”
“I need to weaken those wards. Not remove them entirely—that I could do without you. But if they just disappeared, that would send the wrong message. It would look altogether too much like a trap. What I want is to make it look as if they haven’t been properly maintained. As if they aren’t as robust as they once were. I want a vampire to be able to get through them with only a little trouble.”
“A vampire. Like Miss Malvern,” Polder said, nodding.
“You came here to draw Malvern out!” Clara said, nearly shouting.
Fetlock turned to face her at last. “I should have thought my purposes were abundantly clear. I didn’t come here just for Caxton,” he said. “I came because I knew I could get all of Malvern’s favorite people in one place at one time. You and Glauer. Caxton and myself. The Polders. Everyone on earth who represents any kind of actual threat to her. She’s unlikely to have such a chance again—she’s almost certain to strike here tonight. And we’ll be ready for her. I have enough guns and enough men to handle anything she can bring to bear.”
“This—all of this—killing Glynnis, threatening children, firing me, everything,” Clara said, because as much as she understood it, she didn’t want it to be real. “This raid was just meant as a trap for Malvern? You locked up Caxton in that paddy wagon just to tempt Malvern into attacking?”
“Caxton isn’t the only one who knows how to bait a hook,” he told her.
[ 1881 ]
When the Vaquero found her she wore black lace, like a lady of Spain. She lay on velvet pillows in a cave where water never stopped dripping, where stalactites grew down to touch stalagmites and form stately columns. Half-deads attended to her needs, but they withdrew discreetly when he came to her.
They called her the Mesa Ghost in town. The Mexicans called her la Llorona or la Malinche after old legends, or la Chingita when they feared her most and needed to curse her name.
They called her all kinds of things, but they never stopped coming.
The Vaquero was a hard man, scarred and gray, with one eye that was always bloodshot. He was missing teeth. He was missing two fingers from his left hand. His right hand stayed on the hilt of a knife he wore at his belt.
“Come forth,” she whispered to him. The cave amplified her tiny voice. She had chosen this place carefully to minimize her weaknesses. “Come to me, lover.” And she laughed. Sometimes they did come to her that way, the jaded cowboys too worn out for human whores, or too desperate for a fuck to care about the price. She used her orisons to give them what they were looking for, but always slightly twisted, slightly depraved. A man looking for his long-lost sweetheart, some girl he’d left on a railroad siding in Chicago before heading west, would find her in the cave—but oh, the things she would say, the secrets she would whisper, about how her innocence was gone, about the things she’d done in his absence. A man looking for the perfection of a Parisian beauty would find a cancan girl waiting for him, but only too late see the scars and lesions on her inner thighs.
She liked to play little games with them, to keep herself sharp.
But the Vaquero had not come for love. Nor for money—she could see it in his eyes. His haunted eyes.
“You got a true form I can see?” he asked, as he approached. Never quite so close that she might lunge over and take what she wanted from him. “I like plain dealing, is all.”
She closed her eye and relaxed her spell. She felt him flinch when he saw what he was truly speaking to, but she chose not to take offense.
Justinia knew what she looked like these days, when there was no one there to see her, no distorted mirror of a man’s private fantasies to shape her countenance.
“Speak your desire,” she told the Vaquero.
“Desires? I got none of them. A man with desires in this desert is a dead man,” he told her. “The way you stay alive is to conquer yerself.”
“Interesting,” she purred. “But ye came here for a reason.”
He shook his head. “Damned if I know my own self what it was. Mebbe to kill you, do one good deed to atone for a lifetime of sinning. Mebbe it was to fuck you after all, like them cowboys said I could. Maybe one and then the other.”
“Hopefully the latter shall come first, and the first shall be much later,” she said.
“Don’t try to confuse my mind. I heard tell you can do that, too.” The Vaquero edged closer to her. He was careful. He was alert. She thought it might be enjoyable to charm him, to mesmerize him with her shriveled eye, but he wouldn’t meet her gaze.
“The Indians say you’s always been here,” he went on. “But I say that ain’t true. Got word from an old veteran he saw you back east, during the War Between the States. Don’t know what to make of that. You sound continental, like you’s from Europe. Everyone agrees on a little of the story—that you prey on those what come by here. Every rider through these canyons hears your siren call, and more than will admit it come to answer. You take a little of their soul away and in return they get what they want, though by the ashen faces I saw in town, mebbe they don’t want it so much afterward. You’re some kind of demon, and you’re definitely a vampire, like in them old stories.”
He fell silent as if he could only speak so many words in a given day and he had used up his quota. His knife had protruded an inch from its sheath as his hand played with its hilt.
Justinia was not then so much afraid of this man as wary. Respectful of his strength. She’d never met its equal before in a living man, though there had been a few women, witches mostly. … She found herself wishing he would relax, calm down, so she could make a shocking proposition. But he was full of some manner of stimulant—either pure adrenaline or too much coffee or some Indian drug—and he held himself like a bear trap ready to be sprung, like a pair of jaws ready to bite down on the instant.
“Ye’ve lied to me,” she said. “I see ye have a desire, after all.” When he quailed she turned her head from side to side. She had the strength for that. “Oh, ye’ll not fuck me, nor do ye want power. But ye’re lost. And like all lost men, ye desire to be found.”
“I … done things,” he admitted. “Things not sanctioned by the Bible.”
“Tell me. I like stories,” Justinia breathed. “Don’t worry. I’ll forgive ye for all your sins.”
“That’s a sorry kind of absolution you offer.”
“Better than none. A man like ye—no priest can shrieve you now, can they? Ye’ve sinned mortally. I see it in thy blood.”
He shuddered and sighed and shook. And then he nodded.
And she knew she had him.
He sat with her all through that night, grunting out his tale of heartbreak. Of a little girl in a dusty town, whose eyes were still as bright as the dawn, and of stray bullets, and of a man who never touched a gun again. A man who’d been wandering since, searching out killers, oath breakers, monsters—anyone more evil than himself.
It did not take an intellect of Justinia’s caliber to know what would happen when he laid his head on her shoulder and wept bitter tears into her dress. She reached up one skeletal hand as if to comfort him.
His knife was already in her flesh, twisting through vital organs. The tip of the knife tore her liver apart, lobe by lobe.
That made her laugh. “I haven’t used that in centuries,” she whispered. And then she sank her fangs deep into his neck.
It was the most blood she’d dared to take in a very long time, and she grew drunk on it, intoxicated by his strength and his power. For years afterward she slept with his bones, remembering the man, reliving that wonderful taste.
39.
“No … no,” Clara said. “No. You can’t do this.” She couldn’t believe it—not from Fetlock.
He was going to sacrifice Caxton’s life, just to draw Malvern out of hiding.<
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“I’m not looking for your input at this time, Ms. Hsu,” Fetlock said, rising from the table. “Mr. Polder, I’d prefer to give you some time to think this over. Unfortunately that’s not an option. We must be ready before nightfall, or I can’t guarantee that my trap will take Malvern.”
“You think you can guarantee that if he complies?” Clara demanded. “Listen, the reason we came here—the thing we wanted to warn Caxton about—you don’t know how many half-deads she has. How much blood she’s been drinking. Malvern isn’t playing around. She’s not just going to walk into a trap and let you kill her. Don’t you understand? People have been trying to do that for three hundred years, and none of them have succeeded. She is not going to fall for this!”
“I have a number of surprises up my own sleeve,” Fetlock said. His eyes flashed with impatience. “You are not helping me right now, Ms. Hsu. If you wish to come out of this without being charged for any number of crimes, I suggest you start helping me. You and Special Deputy Glauer can do that by going outside right now and walking around the clearing, making yourselves as visible as possible. I’m certain that Malvern is watching this place around the clock, and relatively certain that her spies already know you’re here. I’d like to be completely sure of it.”
“No, damn you. I will not play along with this. Not when you have Caxton locked up in that truck—locked up like a hen in a henhouse, waiting for the fox to come! Let her out of there. Let her out of the paddy wagon and I’ll—I’ll help you. Let her out and give her a gun. It’s the only real chance we have. Caxton is the only one here who really knows how to fight a vampire. She’s the only one here who ever killed a vampire!”
“I got a few at Gettysburg,” Glauer pointed out.
Clara stared at him. “Please tell me you’re on my side here.”
32 Fangs: Laura Caxton Vampire Series: Book 5 Page 20
