And Justinia saw that Reyes was right. This woman was ready for the curse. Ready to become a vampire, nearly as ready as Reyes had been himself. It would be simplicity itself to drive her to suicide. “Very well,” Justinia said. She had never employed a woman as a knight protector before, but she saw no reason it couldn’t work. “Take her at your leisure, Reyes.”
“And her—her too,” the fledgling vampire said. He sounded as if he was panting there in the bushes. Like a common voyeur.
How grotesque.
“I want them both, and they can—they will do things for me—”
“Yes, yes, very well,” Justinia said.
She spared one more glance at the woman standing in the doorway. Taller, stronger, with hair cut as short as a man’s. There was something about this one, something that would make it more difficult to impose the curse on her. But it could be done. No human could withstand forever the attentions of a vampire.
“Take them both,” she said.
She had no idea that she had just been given her first look at Laura Caxton. At the woman who would become her nemesis. If she had, she surely would have ordered Reyes to kill Caxton on the spot.
But not even the most skilled gambler can say what card will turn up next.
49.
Clara raised her carbine and started to line up a shot, intending to put as much lead as possible into Malvern’s back before she ran dry. She had absolutely zero other ideas of what to do next.
“No,” Glauer whispered, putting a hand over the receiver of her weapon. “Didn’t you see? She’s so full of blood she’s completely bulletproof at this point. She’s rocketproof!”
“We can’t let her have Caxton,” Clara insisted.
“We don’t have a choice,” he told her. His face was contorted in horror and disgust. It must have caused him physical pain to admit he couldn’t do anything. Glauer was not the quickest man Clara had ever met, nor the bravest. But he had always, always tried to do the right thing.
There was no right thing to do, though. Not here, not now.
Clara could only watch in terror as Malvern turned her attention on Fetlock. The Fed shrieked in fear and tried to run for his mobile command center. He wasn’t going to make it, Clara knew. He had no chance.
Before he could get to the doors of the vehicle, Malvern was there, waiting for him. She favored him with a cold smile.
“You can’t be this strong,” he said, staring into her eye.
“Marshal Fetlock,” she said. “I have so much to thank ye for. Thy incompetence has made my existence so easy.” She laughed.
Fetlock tried to turn and run away.
Malvern grasped his head between her hands. Just like she’d done with Darnell. This time, though, she didn’t kill her victim. Instead she just held Fetlock in place. His legs tried to run, but he could no more escape her grasp than he could sprout wings and fly. She held him without so much as straining a muscle, forcing his face around so he was looking at her again.
“I’m tempted to let ye live,” Malvern said. “As long as you’re in charge of my case, I have so very little to worry about, do I? But, alas. Ye do keep trying to destroy me. Even when it’s clear to everyone ye haven’t a chance.”
“I’ll—I’ll do anything you want,” Fetlock pleaded. “Anything. I’ll get you blood. I’ll get you so much blood.”
“I’ve already drunk my fill tonight,” Malvern told him.
Glauer tried to pull Clara back to the illusory safety of the trailers. She shook off his hand. “Where’s Urie Polder?” she whispered. “Maybe he can do something.”
“You think he wouldn’t already be doing it if he could? Come on,” Glauer insisted. “She’ll be after us next. Don’t you see? She’s eliminating anyone who could possibly be a threat to her. We’re on that list.”
“Not right now, we’re not,” Clara said.
She watched as Malvern applied a slight pressure to Fetlock’s head. The Fed squealed in pain as blood leaked from his nose.
“My God, it’s true,” Clara whispered, perhaps only to herself. “She’s had so much blood she isn’t even thirsty anymore. How many people did she kill?”
No one answered her. She turned to look for Glauer and saw that he was gone. Surely he hadn’t run away. That wasn’t his style. But where could he have gone?
Malvern lifted Fetlock off his feet so that his body dangled from his neck. His arms and legs flailed at the air, beat at Malvern’s chest, but he was utterly helpless.
“Ye can do me one service only,” Malvern told the Fed. “Tell me. Tell me where Laura is.”
Fetlock’s limbs stopped struggling. He lifted one arm to point at the paddy wagon where it sat in the middle of the clearing.
“There. She’s in there! She’s the one you want! I’m nothing to you!”
“Ah, now that’s truth,” Malvern agreed.
She closed her hands.
Clara had to look away as Fetlock’s head collapsed inward on itself, the bones of his skull creaking and snapping as they were crushed. As his brains spurted out in a cloud of blood. Blood that dripped from Malvern’s hands as she let the dead Marshal drop.
Malvern paid him no more heed than a discarded toy. She looked at the paddy wagon as if sizing up how she should proceed, then floated over toward it where it sat alone. She ran one hand along its metal side, then moved to the back, where its massive reinforced doors stood locked up tight.
“Laura,” she sang. “Laura. Ye’re in there.”
The paddy wagon didn’t rock on its wheels. Caxton made no sound inside of it. Maybe she just didn’t want to give Malvern the satisfaction.
“Oh, I can see ye,” Malvern crooned. “I can see your blood, Laura. I can see it like a lamp in the dark of a storm. Right through these metal walls I can see it.”
Malvern leaned her face up against the doors of the paddy wagon. Pressed her ear against the metal. A smile of incredible warmth filled her face.
“Oh, Laura, ye must know—of all my hunters, of all mine enemies. Ye were the sweetest. Ye gave me the best sport. I would gladly make ye into mine own image if that would please ye. Would it? We could chase one another down the centuries then. We could dance like this forever. How I’d like that.”
Caxton finally responded. The doors of the paddy wagon jumped. She must have thrown her whole weight against them.
Malvern laughed. “Ye won’t take my offer, I know. Ye saw what happened to poor, sweet Jameson when he accepted the curse. Not to mention little Raleigh. And Alva Griest, and Reyes, and Scapegrace, what happened to all my protectors. Ye saw what became of your beloved Deanna. Ye know what I have to offer. And ye’ll say no.”
The doors jumped again. A shrieking noise emerged from inside the paddy wagon—had Caxton finally snapped? Clara couldn’t believe it. Had Malvern finally pushed Caxton to the point of madness, until she could do nothing but howl in rage?
“I’ll miss ye terribly, my dear. But ye see, fate has ordained that I’m to live forever. The Lord knows there were times I wished it otherwise. But not now. Now I want to live. Now I want to win this game. Time to show your hand. I doubt ye can match what I have.”
Malvern lifted a little higher in the air. She reached up and grasped the top of the paddy wagon doors. Her fingers sank into the metal as if it were made of cheese, though it groaned and screamed in defiance. Then, with one quick, graceful motion, she tore the doors right off of their hinges. They were reinforced steel a good inch thick, but she tore them down like a silk curtain.
Beyond lay only darkness. The light of the fires that illuminated the clearing couldn’t reach inside. There was no sign of Caxton in there. Had she escaped somehow? Clara’s heart nearly burst at the thought. Of course she had. Of course Laura Caxton, world’s greatest vampire killer, had somehow escaped once again, had somehow survived, and even now she had some amazing plan, some clever trick that would let her get the best of Malvern and win the day.
“Come out of th
ere, Laura. Ye’ve nowhere else to go. I can see ye crouching. How like a tiger, lying in wait, in ambush, how like—”
Caxton came flying out of the darkness then, without waiting to hear what else Malvern might say. Her hands and feet were free of the shackles Fetlock had put on them. She was holding something, some kind of weapon. Clara just had time to see that it was a metal pole—a steel rod, something Caxton must have torn out of the inside of the paddy wagon by sheer persistence and desperation.
She shoved its jagged end straight into Malvern’s good eye.
[ 2003 ]
Justinia’s battered frame was not fully healed, not by a long shot. Her muscles were as thin and dry as vines in wintertime and they wrapped around bones easily visible beneath her papery skin. Her tattered nightgown hung on her like a tent. Her face was drawn and spotted and her one good eye looked only half inflated. But the blood Scapegrace and Deanna had brought to her had been enough, just enough, to get her out of her coffin for the first time in over a century. She was standing up, walking even, advancing on Jameson Arkeley with her mouth open. Her teeth were fully recovered—sharp, deadly, and numerous.
“That’s right. Come here,” Arkeley said. He was propped up on one arm. The other waved her closer. “Come on, you old hag. You want it. You can have it.”
He had cut his hand somehow. There was fresh blood on his palm.
Justinia’s body wanted this so very much. Every fiber of her newly reconstituted self wanted that blood. It was all she could see, all she could think about.
Vengeance would be hers. After twenty years of imprisonment and degradation, she would destroy the man who had dared to lock her away.
“Come on. Come on and take it,” Arkeley rasped.
Malvern glided toward him across the floor.
“You can’t resist,” Arkeley taunted. “If you were human, maybe, you could handle this. But you’re a vampire and you can’t resist the smell of blood, can you?”
He was offering himself to her. And she knew why. Should she kill him, she would lose all protection of the law. She would be signing her own warrant of execution. His associates could gun her down without compunction. It didn’t matter. Blood mattered. It was all she wanted in the world.
He scuttled toward her, his hand always outstretched, wagging in her face. Her feet urged her forward.
But then she saw the child standing in the doorway. Caxton, the new vampire killer. The pathetic girl who had somehow resisted the curse. Who had somehow survived everything Justinia’s knight protectors could do to destroy her.
If it wasn’t for this one … if Caxton hadn’t already destroyed Scapegrace and Deanna … if the future didn’t demand more. If, if, if.
Jameson’s time as a fearless killer of monsters was over. By all rights she should be allowed to savor her victory. But he’d been smart—too smart. He’d trained a replacement. A knight protector of his own.
A thin, translucent eyelid came down over Justinia’s eye. It shuddered gently as if she were about to faint.
“Come on,” Jameson shouted. His body was shaking too. The little blood still in his body pulsed and trembled with need. “Come on!”
Slowly, Justinia closed her mouth. Painfully. Then she opened it again and a creaking sound like a paper bag being folded up leaked out of her. “Damn ye,” she said, the first words she’d spoken in many decades.
She wasn’t talking to Jameson. That curse was for the child, Caxton.
Justinia turned around, slinked back to her coffin, and crawled over the lip. Nothing in her long life had ever been so hard. But that life would have been much shorter if she lacked inner strength. If she was not her own mistress. Despite every urge in her body and her soul, she lay back and let her wrinkled head rest on the silk lining.
As the humans started screaming, she closed the lid.
50.
Malvern’s head shot backward and she threw up one arm to protect her face, too late to stave off the attack. For a moment her gown, her wig, even her skin flickered and a strange transformation overtook her. The vampire was gone, replaced by a SWAT trooper in full combat armor and helmet.
No, Clara thought. It wasn’t a SWAT trooper in that armor. It was still Malvern. What she saw was what Malvern actually looked like at that moment. The radiant being who had come down the ridge, the creature of gowns and wigs and eye patches, was an illusion, an image foisted on Clara’s mind by one of Malvern’s orisons.
Darnell, with his snake eye, had seen through it. That was what he’d meant when he told Fetlock that his bullets had pierced her armor but not her skin. Clara could see the damage now, the craters in Malvern’s chestplate and helmet where Darnell had shot her with his military ammunition. Beneath she could see perfect white skin, unblemished, unbroken.
It made perfect sense, of course. When Jameson Arkeley had faced off against Caxton, he had gone to the trouble of wearing a bulletproof vest. Caxton had been forced to use armor-piercing Teflon bullets on that occasion. Malvern must have been paying attention. She had stripped one of the SWAT troopers of his armor, back at the beginning of the attack on the Hollow, and taken it for her own. Her skin was far better armor than anything humans had designed, but it never hurt to be careful.
Why she had used some of her magical power to hide her appearance, Clara didn’t know. Perhaps simple vanity, or a desire to look as terrifying as possible. It had certainly worked in that regard.
The illusion flickered back into place before Caxton had even landed on her feet. Malvern clutched at her eye, but to Clara it didn’t look damaged at all. Well, of course not—if she could take a hellfire rocket right in the face without flinching, an improvised steel spear wasn’t going to put out that eye. She must have been more startled than hurt.
Which of course had to be what Caxton had counted on.
Caxton didn’t slow down. She didn’t turn and nod at Clara as she ran past. She had to know that Malvern would be on her trail in a split second. Instead she sprinted as fast as she could for the ridge on the far side of the clearing, the undeveloped ridge opposite the Polder house. As she ran, she shouted over her shoulder, “Now, Urie! Hit her now!”
Clara hadn’t seen Urie Polder and Heather moving into position. Neither had Malvern, apparently. Now, even as Malvern began to rise once more to her feet and give chase, Urie and Heather each placed a hand on her shoulder, as if they were trying to get her attention.
“That’s suicide,” Glauer gasped. Clara turned and saw him behind her, clutching to the side of one of the few undamaged trailers.
Patience Polder stood next to him. “No,” she said. “It’s a sacrifice.”
Clara watched, paralyzed, as Malvern rose to her full height and started to turn around to face the two witchbillies who had accosted her. She raised one arm back in a gesture that, had it been completed, would have disemboweled both of them.
Instead, as Malvern’s arm moved backward, gaining momentum, it visibly slowed. It inched through the air, gaining little ground, as if time itself were being distorted.
“What are they doing to her?” Glauer demanded.
“Stealing her power,” Patience explained. “Drawing out the magic that sustains her. The more she struggles, the more energy flows into them. Every time she tries to move, every time she exerts so much as a single muscle, they take more from her.”
“But that’s—that’s perfect,” Glauer said, and he hefted his carbine. “They’ve got her dead to rights. We can just go over there and—and destroy her heart, somehow. What’s stopping us? Why didn’t they just do this sooner?”
“Because in about five seconds, the power will overcome them. This isn’t a solution,” Patience said. “It’s a delaying tactic, that’s all. Before you could even reach her it will be too late.”
Clara could see what the power drain was doing to Heather. The witchbilly woman’s eyes went wide and her mouth fell open. Her free hand shook with a powerful spasm as she fought to keep her other hand touchi
ng Malvern. As powerful as Malvern had become, there was no way a human being could absorb all that energy.
She saw the stump of Urie Polder’s wooden arm give off a puff of smoke. A moment later it burst into flame. Polder clamped his eyes shut against the pain, but he kept his human hand in contact with Malvern, refusing to give in.
It was clear by that point, however, that it was a losing battle. Malvern’s arm had begun to move again—slowly, just an inch at a time. But it was moving. And her eye burned like a torch, an angry red flame that left her intentions obvious.
Meanwhile Caxton had reached the side of the ridge—and hadn’t stopped there. She grabbed hold of the edge of a sheet and pulled hard, shaking loose a mass of branches and leaves that had been leaned up against a boulder to camouflage the sheet’s presence. When the sheet came away it revealed a dark opening into the ridge. The mouth of a natural cave.
Clara turned to face Glauer and Patience. “What is she doing? What’s over there?”
Patience frowned and lifted her shoulders. “The place where the two of them will come together for the last time. Where their final battle will take place.”
“You mean Caxton’s going to lure Malvern into a cave and fight her there? But why? That makes no sense at all. Are you telling me she’s going to go in there and fight Malvern alone? She’s not even armed.”
“Her weapons will be made ready. Her strategy is her own,” Patience said. “Now. If you don’t mind, I need to watch my father die. I owe him that much.”
Clara’s mouth fell open. She spun around again and stared at the tableau by the ripped-open paddy wagon. Heather and Urie Polder were both visibly weakening now, their bodies slumping even as they fought to keep in contact with the vampire. Malvern’s arm had reached the top of its swing and her muscles were tensed to complete the attack.
“For Mother’s sake, Father,” Patience shouted. “For Mother, hold on!”
32 Fangs: Laura Caxton Vampire Series: Book 5 Page 27
