“See if I got ’im,” the trooper ordered.
Clara was too wound up to argue. She ran forward into the dark, playing her red light over every body she came across. When she found the half-dead she had to whistle in respect. Darnell’s shot had taken the half-dead right in the spine. It lay in a spilled pile of body armor, trying to crawl away on its arms.
She put a boot in the small of its back and pinned it to the road. Then she raised her carbine and aimed for its head.
“You damn well ain’t gonna steal my collar,” Darnell said, jogging up behind her. “I been trackin’ this one too long to let it get away so clean.”
Clara looked up because she’d heard someone running toward them. It turned out to be Glauer. “I heard shots,” he said.
Clara nodded and gestured at the half-dead under her boot. “You remember Trooper Darnell, of course.”
Glauer stared at the snake-eyed trooper. “What’s your game here?”
“Intelligence. I got my orders from Marshal Fetlock. Find one of these fools and figger out what it knows. You go ahead and stand back, little lady. It’s my turn now to make this dingus talk.”
Clara frowned at that, but she removed her boot. The half-dead immediately started crawling away, but Darnell just bent over it and shoved a hunting knife into its shoulder, ruining its ability to move. “You gonna tell me what I want to know?”
The half-dead mewled like a cat.
Darnell stabbed it again.
Normally Clara would have been disgusted. She would have insisted that Darnell stop at once. But this was one of the half-deads that had killed all the cops in the clearing. This was one of the bastards that had stabbed her and nearly killed Glauer. She decided it had a little pain coming.
Which, she realized, was exactly what Caxton would have said. In her time Caxton had tortured more than her fair share of half-deads for information. It hadn’t stopped there, of course. She’d eventually started torturing human beings, as well, and that was why she’d gone to prison.
Down on the ground, the half-dead screamed as the hunting knife bit into its cheek. “Okay! Okay! I’ll talk!”
“Better,” Darnell said. “Now—how many of you are there out here? How many still alive?”
“Not—many,” the half-dead promised in its tinny little high-pitched voice. “You got all but a handful. She told us to fall—to fall back, to retreat. Stop! Please, stop! I’m cooperating!”
“Where’d she get you lot?” Darnell demanded. “I ain’t never heard of so many half-deads gathered at one time, and I know all the case files.”
“Family reunion,” the half-dead said, sobbing a little. “Over by Elizabethtown. My family, my family reunion, we came from, from all over the country to be together. Cousins, grandparents, babies I never got to meet before. She thought it was funny to take us all at once. At the time I didn’t see it, but now—”
“She took you all in one night?” Darnell demanded. “Last night?”
“Yes!” the half-dead screamed.
Clara looked to Glauer, and the big cop nodded. If Malvern could get enough blood, if she could claim enough victims, all the damage of centuries could be erased instantly. Clara had seen it happen during the prison raid. She had watched Malvern’s flesh fill in, seen her rise and walk and regain the power of speech. Regain the power and the speed of a freshly risen vampire. It had taken about a dozen victims to make that happen.
There had been scores—maybe a hundred—of half-deads in the attack on the clearing. If she had taken them all in one night, she would be stronger than ever before. She would be bullet-proof, and so fast she could probably dodge bullets. She would be able to throw cars around like toys.
“She took a big risk, doin’ that,” Darnell said. “Profile on her says she’s the clever type. That she don’t do stupid. You sayin’ she just got stupid last night?”
The half-dead screamed again as Darnell broke its wrist. “No! No! She’d never—she’s the wisest, most—stop that! Please, I beg you, stop! She has a plan, she said she has a big plan, one final strike and then, and then—”
“What’s the plan?” Darnell demanded.
“Kill you all.”
Darnell grunted. Maybe at the thought that he was marked for death. Maybe because he’d already assumed as much and wanted new information. “And then? What then? She must know we won’t stop. She kills alla us, she’s gonna have the army down on her neck.”
“Kill you all—and then—then—hibernate. Like a bear. Go underground, hee hee, literally, seal herself up in a tomb. Wait fifty years. Wait a hundred years, until people—until your children forget. Forget what a vampire can do. But first she needs to kill Caxton. Kill the hunter, keep her from passing on her secrets.”
“That’s what I wanted to know,” Darnell said. “Either of you got questions you want answered, ’fore I put this creep out of its misery?”
“I have a few for you, actually,” Glauer said.
“That’s just fine. Hold on one tick.”
Clara looked away as Darnell stomped on the half-dead’s skull. It tried to plead for its life, but its words were cut off quite abruptly.
“Now I got to report back to the Marshal,” Darnell said. His snake eye burned like a torch in the red light from Clara’s carbine.
“Fetlock? That coward locked himself up tight. He’s done. Darnell, we can use your help,” Glauer pointed out. “We need every man we can get for when Malvern strikes. Which is going to happen any minute now.”
“I work for the Marshal.”
Glauer shook his head. “I’m telling you, he’s buttoned up—”
“Yeah, just like he meant to. You think he aborted on this dustup? You think he’s done? He’s got surprises still, and—”
Darnell stopped talking because someone had screamed back in the clearing.
Apparently Malvern had arrived.
[ 1991 ]
Her fingers drifted across the keyboard, speaking for her now that she lacked the strength to move her tongue and teeth. Letter by letter she spelled out the message, as always delighted by the way the black characters appeared on the screen before her. Like a magical printing press, this device, this new computer they’d given her. It made things so much easier.
shall we play our usual game, my dear?
what aspect may i take today?
Gerald—dear Dr. Armonk, her pet, her plaything, the man of science assigned by the state to study her, the man she’d come to study just as intently, blushed in the dim light of her cell in the abandoned sanitarium. He had a magazine rolled up in his hands, its glossy pages reflecting the overhead lights. He approached her tentatively, as if she would ever refuse him. Spreading the pages open, he licked his lips as he showed her a picture of a woman spread-eagled across a padded bench in a gymnasium. Such simple tastes he had. These new men, these twentieth-century boys! They had cleared away all the old prejudices and blue-nosed moralisms of olden days, whole worlds of erotic possibilities had been opened to them, and yet still, still in their fantasies they wanted the same things as ever.
Justinia closed her eye and worked her orison, giving herself blond hair, full, pouting lips, and massive, impossible bosoms. Across the room she could feel Armonk’s heart beating faster. He did so like playing this game with her.
He never touched her when she made herself over into his dream girls. He always stayed well clear of her coffin until he’d finished what he’d come here to do. She often pleaded with him to just let her have a little caress, a single kiss. She begged him to ravish her, to make her feel like a woman again. So far he’d been able to resist, and she had never made the mistake of pushing too hard.
Some games took longer to win than others.
She let her hand drift across the keyboard again.
it’s been so long since master jameson came to see me.
“What? Arkeley? That man—that man’s a pest. Surely you’re glad he’s leaving you alone,” Armonk insisted a
s he unbuckled his belt. “With his idle threats and his demands for information. Honestly, I think he’s grown bored. He used to bellow at us all the time about how dangerous you are, but you’ve never hurt anybody since you came here, and no one takes him seriously anymore. The last time I saw him, he was even talking about getting someone else to take over your case. He’s been looking for other vampires this whole time and he’s never found any. I think he’s ready to admit defeat.”
Hmm. Interesting.
But that would never do.
Her fingers tapped at the keys. Backspaced to erase what she’d started to write. Moved once again, forming her thoughts, even as Armonk stared at her with those wide, needy eyes.
She had a plan. A rather simple plan, but one that would unfold over a span of many years, and which required certain things to happen at certain times. A plan that depended on certain people acting in predictable ways. Jameson was a major part of that plan. Her sphere of influence was so very narrow now, and if he were to move beyond that sphere, to abandon her for some other interest …
No. That would never do.
She needed to make him find her compelling again. To give him new reason to stick close by her side.
lover, i must have your touch. ye are the world to me.
“Justinia, you know how fond I am of you, but—”
ye don’t love me. ye’ve never so much as stolen a kiss.
“Don’t say that.” He bit his lip. “Please. Don’t even suggest such a thing. It’s simply not true, and—”
this game grows tiresome.
it takes overmuch of my strength.
i shan’t play anymore, not when all the fun is yours.
“No,” he said. “No. Please. I implore you. I need this, I … I can’t live without our … without our game,” he told her. His heart pounded in his chest. How easy it was to make them afraid. Sometimes it didn’t even seem sporting. “Please. Tell me you didn’t mean it. Tell me we’ll always have—always have this.”
Were there really tears in his eyes?
She let the orison slip, just a little. Let her hair turn red, let one of her eyes darken and fade in its socket. Enough to frighten him, but not enough to repulse him.
“Please,” he begged, unable to form other words. She’d been his constant lover for almost ten years now. He’d come to believe her flatteries, to believe in her affection. Human beings were so vulnerable to love.
“Please,” he said again, but she did not relent.
He did exactly as she’d expected. He had no choice, not if he wanted to keep her. He rushed to her side, wringing his hands, sweating profusely. He leaned over her coffin, leaned so close she could feel the heat of his blood inside of him. Pressed his lips to hers.
She bit down, hard. When he started screaming, when he started flailing back and forth, she used the last reserves of her strength to hold him, to keep him from breaking free. Once the blood started to flow it got much easier.
That should get Jameson’s attention, she thought. She expected he would find the time to visit her quite soon.
47.
It was just too dark. Clara could see nothing of what was happening in the clearing. She could only hear the screams. Then shapes loomed up out of the darkness all around her and she raised her carbine, thinking Malvern must have brought in reinforcements, more half-deads to overwhelm what little resistance remained. She almost fired blindly into the crowd of dark shapes, which would have been a terrible mistake. It wasn’t half-deads coming toward her, but witchbillies.
“She’s here!” a woman in a bonnet screamed. She held a bawling infant to her chest. “What do we do?”
Glauer stood up on tiptoe, trying to peer into the clearing, trying to see what was going on. “Get to the vehicles—take any car you can. If you can’t find a car, just run for it, up the road—you,” he said, grabbing a man with a straw hat on his head. “Where’s Urie Polder? Where’s that woman—what was her name, the one who could do real magic—”
“Heather,” Clara provided.
“Right—where are they?”
The man scratched wildly at his beard, his eyes wild in the red light of Clara’s carbine. “I can’t rightly say—they were— they told us to run this way, they—”
“Damn it, he’s going to try to fight her,” Glauer said, turning to Clara. He pushed the witchbilly away, sending him toward the parked circle of cop cars, even though that meant heading back toward the clearing, back toward danger. “Clara, there are kids back there. Polder must be holding her off as best he can to give them a chance to escape.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I take it you’re going to go help him.”
Glauer nodded. His own eyes were only a little less crazy than the witchbilly’s. “But you’re not. Get out of here. Help these people get to safety.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“I don’t have time to argue with you,” Glauer said. “Darnell, grab her. Get her out of here. I don’t care how nasty she fights.”
“Sorry, partner. Nothing doing,” Darnell said. He slung his hunting rifle over his shoulder and started walking toward the clearing. “I got other orders.”
“Goddamn it!” Glauer said, and he grabbed Clara’s arm. “You have a chance to survive this. You have a chance to live.”
“I’m not leaving,” she said again.
He bristled, rising up to his full height. If it came down to blows she would certainly lose. But it would never come to that.
“I’m not leaving without Caxton,” she announced. “Do you understand?”
“No, damn it,” he told her. “I don’t understand that at all. Not after how she treated you. Not after the last two years.” She started to speak, but he held up one hand for peace. “But I know you mean it. Come on, then, if you’ve made your choice.”
He hurried after Darnell, and Clara followed close on his heels.
It wasn’t far to the clearing. Long before they reached it, though, they saw the chaos that had gripped the Hollow. Witchbillies were running everywhere, some headed for their bungalows or trailers, some trying to load up cars with people who didn’t want to go, who were screaming for their loved ones. Some of the men had armed themselves as best they could and were clearing bodies out of the foxholes, clearly intending on trying the same strategy that had gotten the windbreaker cops killed. Some of the women were drawing hasty hex signs in the dirt, though their work was ruined every time someone ran through the lines of cornmeal or bitumen they laid out.
In the middle of it stood Patience Polder, her blond hair uncovered now, her fair skin almost glowing in the darkness. She was calling out orders to anyone who would listen. Some of them did, and headed for the cars, or just ran for the road. Most of them ignored her and did what they thought was best.
It had to be hard to keep a level head, when death itself was coming down a mountain, headed straight for you.
It was dark up on the trail that led to the top of Urie Polder’s house. The trees screened out all the moonlight and painted the ground an utter and profound black. But as Justinia Malvern approached she shone like a lamp in the gloom. Her skin, far paler than Patience’s, seemed illuminated by a spectral lambency as if a spotlight was focused right on her. She was wearing a white gown that flickered as if it were licked by gentle flames, and the enormous wig she wore atop her head shone like spun silver. She wore an eye patch over her empty socket, a black triangle of silk emblazoned with a red heart. Her one remaining eye burned down on the clearing like a laser beam.
She was not touching the ground. Her bare feet pointed downward and cleared the earth by a good foot and a half. She was floating down the mountain, her hands slightly outstretched at her sides.
There was a smile of utter benevolence, of pure compassion on her lips.
And walking behind her, looking sheepish, was Simon Arkeley.
Simon, Clara thought. What the fuck are you doing? She had been right—he must have been up at the house the wh
ole time. When he’d heard the gunfire and the screams, he must have withdrawn, gone into one of his fugue states where he couldn’t interact with the world at all. Most likely he had run inside the house and curled up in a fetal position on the first couch or bed he could find.
Malvern must have found him there, cowering away from the anarchy she had unleashed. She could have killed him effortlessly then. But for some reason, she had spared his life.
The witchbilly Glauer sent to collect him probably hadn’t been as lucky.
Clara was so deeply confused that she didn’t know which way to jump next.
Glauer raised his weapon and drew a bead on Malvern, even though she was still far out of range.
“She’s looking a little better than the last time I saw her,” Clara said. “Glauer, if she drank that much blood—if she ate all of those people—”
“She’ll be completely bulletproof,” he agreed. “I’m out of other ideas, though. I say we shoot her anyway.”
Clara shrugged. “Works for me.”
Malvern drifted down the mountain path a few more yards, then came to a stop. In the clearing, more than a few of the witchbillies stopped what they were doing to watch her. Patience kept exhorting them to flee, but they seemed transfixed. Vampires had the power to hypnotize their victims, Clara knew. They could even control people to some extent—a vampire had once forced Glauer to attack Caxton, and he’d been unable to resist. The witchbillies were supposed to have charms against that sort of thing, however, and Clara wondered if they were hypnotized at all, or just so gripped by curiosity as to what would happen next that it had overwhelmed their rational faculties.
Up on the side of the ridge, Simon Arkeley took a few hesitant steps forward until he was standing in front of Malvern. He cleared his throat and started talking, but he was so far away Clara couldn’t make out his words.
A trace of irritation passed across Malvern’s face. Then she moved like lightning and seized Simon by the throat. Glauer changed his aim and for a second Clara thought he might fire, range be damned, but as quickly as Malvern had grabbed Simon she released him again.
32 Fangs: Laura Caxton Vampire Series: Book 5 Page 25
