Caxton fought desperately to control her emotions. She had spent two years hardening herself to this, to the cost of her actions. It just wasn’t fair that Malvern could tear her open now and let all that pain come out. It wasn’t fair! “Damn it, I saved some of them! Some of the people who were there the day we mourned Jameson. I saved some of them. I saved Simon, and—”
“Turn around,” Malvern said.
Knowing it was a bad idea, but having no choice, Caxton did as she was told.
Standing behind her were three people dressed in funeral black. They looked appropriately sad for a funeral, but they were alright. They were unharmed, alive, and safe and—at least they were alive.
Simon Arkeley, Patience Polder, and Clara. Clara, looking cute even in funeral clothes. Clara, with her bangs and her little nose and her slim hips, Clara who—
“They’ll be dead before sunrise,” Malvern pointed out. “After I kill thee, I must go and see to them as well. Do you understand why? Because they are your potential replacements, Laura. They have reason to hunt me down. And they know a little of your tricks. You’ve taught them somewhat. Enough to make them dangerous. I’d be a fool to let them live.”
“Fuck you,” Caxton howled. “It’s not going to happen that way! I’ll beat you—I led you right into my trap and I will destroy you, you bitch! I will—”
Caxton stopped speaking, because pain had gripped her chest, searing agony she couldn’t comprehend. Her body curled up and she dropped to the frigid soil, suddenly lacking the strength to even stand.
Vesta Polder leaned over her. Except this was a Vesta Polder with only one eye. The other socket was full of darkness, a blackness as profound as the gulf between the stars.
“What—are you—doing?” Caxton grunted through clenched teeth.
“Stopping your heart. I’ve shown ye what you might have gained by turning away from this path. I’ve shown ye what it costs to be human. Now let me show ye what could have been yours if ye’d not been so proud.”
Caxton had a good idea of what was coming next. She couldn’t have stopped it, though, not for all the strength of will she possessed. The dream couldn’t end until Malvern allowed it to end. She could only go along for the ride.
The darkness in Malvern’s missing eye grew and spread. It filled up all of Caxton’s vision. She felt her body blow away on the breeze like so much dust, felt even her consciousness leach away and disappear. Soon she was no more than a speck of ego floating in a cosmic void, an observer, passionless, devoid of even critical judgment. She could do nothing but watch the scene that was presented to her next.
[ 2008 ]
It was foolhardy to come so close, but Justinia had lost much of her natural caution. This game demanded taking certain risks.
And sometimes she just wished to see things for herself.
She stood atop a mercantile store, a place that sold woolens and yarn, in a town called Bridgeville. She had a spyglass through which she could observe as, below, a van full of her half-deads careened off the highway and into a ditch. Inside the van the last survivors would be tearing each other to pieces, on her orders. It would not do to leave too many of them intact, lest they be caught and interrogated.
One of them would hold off, though. One, the driver of the van, would wait until the proper moment.
It was not long in coming. Back on the highway, the little red car rocked on its tires, its front end crumpled and ruined. One of its head-lamps flared briefly, then died. The doors of the car popped open and two of Justinia’s old enemies clambered out. Hsu and Glauer, Laura’s little assistants.
She knew what they would do next, but she watched with the kind of patience only a three-hundred-year-old corpse can muster. They approached the van, weapons drawn. They discovered the ruin of bodies inside. Found the driver, but not in time to question him.
Hsu and Glauer had never been in any real danger. No, that would have been a complication for Justinia’s plan. This all had to be done a certain way, to a nicety, if it was to work at all.
She needed all of her enemies in one place. The whole raft of them—Urie Polder and his clutch of witches; Marshal Fetlock and his great apparatus of the law; Caxton, oh, yes, Laura Caxton.
Now the last two players had to be invited to the table. Hsu and Glauer. The two people Caxton cared for the most in all the world. Their presence would throw Caxton off her game, distract her when she needed most to focus. Oh, yes, Malvern would ensure that Hsu and Glauer would come.
Hsu and Glauer were clever for humans. It would not be enough to invite them directly, she knew. She had instead to suggest, to give them clues. To make them feel like they had a lead on her, that they were close to finding her.
And all the while they just played directly into her hand.
When it was done, when the last half-dead pulled his own jawbone free of his torn and rotting face, Justinia finally removed herself to safety, to an abandoned storefront not far away. The windows had been boarded up, the doors all sealed. She slipped inside through a broken window at the basement level. Inside more half-deads awaited, along with Justinia’s victims of the night. A pair of teenagers who had been foolish enough to think they could break into her lair and find some privacy there for their dalliances.
They were tied and gagged now. They wriggled so in their bonds, whimpered in their fear. They knew that death was coming for them. As much fun as it might have provided, she did not make them wait.
58.
The details were hard to make out at first. She was in a very dark place, a place full of shadows. It might have been an abandoned shopping mall, or maybe the halls of a high school. Only a trickle of light filtered in through frosted windows to spill across linoleum tile floors.
Then a flashlight beam split the gloom, as bright as a laser beam in that dark place. A second beam roamed across one wall, moving so fast it added no details to the scene.
Someone spoke in a whisper, a sound so small even a mouse would have had a hard time making out the words. But Caxton heard them with no difficulty.
“Keep your gun pointed down at the floor. You’ll probably shoot me by mistake, waving it around like that.”
Caxton knew that voice. Just as well as she knew the voice that answered.
“I’d be doing the world a favor, Arkeley. You’re sure they’re here?”
Jameson Arkeley let his light play across the ceiling. He looked tired, exhausted even. He was bent over like an old man. But he was alive—human, and still alive. His crinkly eyes studied the acoustic ceiling tiles. “I’m sure,” he said.
“Because the last three places we looked didn’t have anything but dust and cobwebs,” Clara replied. “I’m sure you felt at home, but I ruined a perfectly good jacket.”
Clara. She was wearing a leather jacket. She had a gun in her hand—a Beretta. Caxton’s Beretta. And she was working with Arkeley. Working with him to hunt down vampires.
“The half-dead I tortured this morning was very helpful,” Arkeley said.
“Was that before or after breakfast? Or during?”
It didn’t make any sense. Nothing like this had ever happened.
It might have, Malvern told Caxton. It could have been. If ye’d been less stubborn.
What are you talking about? Why would Clara be there, and not me, if—
Oh, hell no.
Malvern laughed inside Caxton’s head. Watch. Watch what might have been.
Clara pointed her light at a door set into the wall ahead of her. A door with an inset glass window. When the light touched the window, Caxton felt her body coming back, re-forming around her point of consciousness. Except it wasn’t her body. Not the way she remembered it.
This body was stronger. So much stronger. Its hands were white claws. It was hairless, with pointed ears, and red eyes.
And it was desperate for blood.
No. No. Don’t make me see this, Caxton begged.
Ye have no choice.
Clara
took a step toward the door. Another. She raised her weapon and aimed it at the glass window.
Caxton’s body moved then, far faster than she’d ever imagined possible. There was an exultation in it. A nearly sexual rush of pleasure in the way her body moved, its speed, its power. She burst through the door like it was made of paper. Shot out into the corridor like a white bullet. But she didn’t attack Clara, as she’d feared. She flew right past Clara—and straight toward Jameson Arkeley.
Her claws grasped him, that weak old man. The feeble cripple—she could feel his heart beating next to hers as she clutched him to her. Beating so fast, the blood in him pumping through his extremities. It was intoxicating. It was unbearable. She brought her head back and grinned, exposing her sharp, sharp teeth.
“What are you waiting for? You little idiot, shoot her!” Jameson howled.
Clara brought the Beretta around, gripping it with two hands. Her flashlight fell to the floor in slow motion, drifting down toward the tiles like a feather.
“Shoot her!” Arkeley screamed.
Clara’s hands trembled as she aimed the gun.
“I can’t,” she said. “That’s Laura. It’s—it’s Laura, I’m sure of it.”
“Laura’s been dead for months,” Arkeley protested. “You know it! You saw her die at Arabella Furnace. You saw what Deanna did to her! Don’t make the same mistake!”
But Clara didn’t shoot.
Caxton buried her teeth in Arkeley’s neck. The blood came fast and hot, spurting into her mouth, across her white skin. Arkeley died a moment later, but not before he had time to say one last thing.
“I always knew you were too weak for the job,” he said.
Caxton didn’t let it get to her. She dropped his corpse when she’d had her fill. If she wanted to, she knew, she could bring him back as a half-dead now. Make him say whatever she wanted him to say, while he peeled skin off his own face.
But that wasn’t why she was here tonight. She wasn’t here to kill. She was here to give new life.
“Clara,” she said, and to her own ears her voice was a growl, a low rasp of menace. “Clara, it’s over now. You don’t have any options left.”
Clara’s whole body shook. She said nothing.
Behind her, through the broken door, two more vampires streamed out into the hall. Malvern and Deanna. They did not surge forward to attack. They stood behind Clara, ready to grab her and hold her down if that was what it took. If Caxton couldn’t convince her.
“We can be together again,” Caxton growled. She took a step toward Clara. Another. Clara raised her gun again, but Caxton just grabbed it out of her hand and threw it away. “We can be lovers if you say yes. We never had a chance before. I never got to make love to you. But now I can.”
“Caxton,” Clara said. There was something wrong with her voice.
“We’ll be a family. You and me. Deanna and Malvern. They’re willing to share me. They’ll be your lovers, too. Lovers and sisters and a mother, that’s a family, right? You just have to say yes. I know you’re scared. I was scared, too.”
“Caxton, fuck, come on, Caxton! Come on, snap out of it!” Clara said.
Caxton didn’t know what she was talking about. Behind Clara, Malvern stiffened, though, as if she understood. What was happening? This dream didn’t make as much sense as the others. It wasn’t as solid, either. The edges seemed all blurry. The light was wrong.
It didn’t matter. Caxton wasn’t in control of her own voice. She was reading from a script Malvern had written. She had no choice but to continue. “It’s good, Clara. It feels so good. And it’s forever. We can be together forever.”
She was close enough to kiss Clara now. Close enough to pass on the curse.
Clara slapped her across the face.
It shouldn’t have hurt. It definitely shouldn’t have thrown Caxton’s head to the side. Vampires were stronger than that. Much stronger.
Clara slapped her again.
“Wake up, you fucking moron! Wake up! She’s here!”
The light changed again, radically this time. Clara’s face hovered in front of her still, but behind Clara the vampires were gone, the hallway was gone, there was only darkness, darkness and something blue, something—
“Wake up!”
Caxton gasped for breath and stared up at the ceiling of the cave, of the killing floor, at the blue and green quartz crystals up there. At the cave—at the cave, the place under the ridge, the place—
The dream was over.
“Shit,” Caxton said.
Malvern was crawling across the ceiling. Not the Malvern of her dream. The Malvern of reality, the Malvern who had killed everyone in the Hollow, the Malvern who was trapped inside the cave with them now. This Malvern had given up any pretense of illusion. She was dressed in nothing but a few tatters of burnt body armor. Her one red eye burned with blood.
And she was climbing on the ceiling like a spider.
“Shit!” Caxton said again. She was lying on the floor, with Clara looming over her, ready to slap her again. Malvern was about to drop on them both.
Caxton reached down and felt the nylon bag she’d brought with her. She found the shotgun and brought it up so fast she didn’t have time to aim, but it didn’t matter, she had to shoot—she understood now, understood what Malvern had been trying to do—
The shotgun erupted in her hands, the recoil worse than she remembered. The shell smashed through the crystals on the ceiling only inches from where Malvern hung, shards of broken quartz showering down across Clara’s shoulders and hair.
Shit—one of the four precious shells, and she’d missed!
Malvern laughed.
Damn it, Malvern hadn’t wanted to talk to her at all. The dream hadn’t been about convincing Caxton to become a vampire. It had just been a distraction. It had just bought time for Malvern to find her way through Urie Polder’s spell, find her way to the geode, to the killing room.
Shit, Caxton thought, shit shit shit, as she tore one of the remaining shells from the stock of the gun and rammed it into the barrel. Shit! She hadn’t planned on this, she’d forgotten what a vampire could do, she’d forgotten that Malvern would be able to rape her mind like that.
“Really, Laura,” Malvern said from the ceiling, as she scuttled around up there, coming closer. She was no more than twenty feet away now. “Really. Thy little blunderbuss can’t harm me now. I’ve drunk so much blood I’m invulnerable, immune to every weapon you have.”
Caxton forced herself to take careful aim. With a shotgun you could never count on real accuracy. But sometimes you didn’t need to.
She fired again, even as Malvern began to laugh once more.
She didn’t laugh for long.
The shot in the round blasted upward across Malvern’s left leg, high up on the thigh in a tight grouping. The special shot tore through muscles and bone, cracking Malvern’s femur, shredding her flesh.
The vampire screamed and fell from the ceiling to land in a heap on the floor.
“Immune, huh?” Caxton asked.
[ 2008 ]
The screams of the mortals all around her barely reached Justinia’s ears. “More,” she said, and the half-deads performed her will, dragging more of the captives to her. She slashed and tore and sank her fangs in them, their blood coating her body, clotting in great clumps on her skin. “More!”
She was the last, the only vampire left. She intended to make a good showing of things in the morning. “More,” she growled. With every drop of blood that slid down her throat she grew stronger. Her skin grew harder, her bones more durable. She grew faster, and stronger. The blood pulsed through her, it suffused her with energy. It was almost too much to bear. She grew full for the first time in centuries, felt sated in a way she never had before. “More.” She grew bloated like a tick with the blood, felt like she would burst. “More!”
For so long she had starved herself. Rationed the blood she took to minimize the evidence she left behind. Th
ere were so many humans looking for her, looking to destroy her. Only by keeping a low profile had she survived. But not now. Now, she would have as much as she could stand. She would have more than that.
Everything was in place. All her enemies would gather, as she had planned. They would resist her as best they could. She would possess a small army of half-deads, and the power of her own body, her own mind.
If she died in the Hollow, if Caxton destroyed her, it would be the end of her kind. Justinia felt no pangs about that. Fitting it was, she thought, that she, the most brilliant, most devious of vampires to ever live, should be the last. But if she lived, if she killed them all—
There would be no stopping her then.
“More!”
59.
Malvern climbed to her feet, not without difficulty. Her leg was a ruin, a mess of fibrous white tissue barely clinging to a scored and cracked bone. She stared down at it with her one red eye, and a hissing noise escaped her lips. She tried to take a step toward Caxton, and the leg buckled. She fell to the floor again, howling, and her arms flailed wildly as she tried to push herself upright again.
Caxton hoped it fucking hurt.
She’d bought herself a precious fraction of a second. She used it to reload—a series of motions she’d practiced over and over again until she could do them with inhuman speed. She cracked open the shotgun and ejected the spent casing. She took another shell from the stock and shoved it home, then swung the barrel up to complete the process. Malvern looked up and staggered toward her, moving no faster than an Olympic athlete could run.
Caxton pointed the weapon and pulled the trigger. The accuracy of the shotgun was terrible, worse than any of the times she’d practiced with it over the years. Still, she didn’t miss.
The shot tore through Malvern’s left shoulder. None of it hit her heart, but damage was done. The tissue split and fell away, the bones shattered. Malvern’s arm fell off and landed on the floor of the cave with a wet plop.
32 Fangs: Laura Caxton Vampire Series: Book 5 Page 32
