She heard police sirens coming closer but lacked the presence of mind to even hope for rescue.
He padded lightly into the street, coming closer. He had all the time in the world and he knew it. Unable to break his gaze, she did not see the police car approaching. Focused intently on her, perhaps seeing nothing but the blood in her body, the vampire didn’t see the car either.
Whether or not the driver of the car saw him she didn’t know. He came around the corner at high speed, his tires shrieking on the asphalt (she heard a plaintive cry from far off, that was all), and barreled down the street right into the vampire’s side, knocking him down and dragging him half a block as the car’s brakes howled and smoked.
Instantly the spell was broken. A stale breath burst out of Caxton’s lungs—she’d been holding it in the whole time—and she bent double, nausea and fear wracking her body. She reached into her collar and grabbed the charm there, almost scalding herself on its stored heat. Strength rushed back through her, making her blood surge.
“Is he dead?” someone yelled. “Please tell me he’s dead.”
“Who?” she asked, before realizing the question was not directed at her. She looked up to see two local police officers circling the vampire’s inert body in the street. They had their weapons out but held upward, at a safe ready.
“He’s not moving,” one of them said. They were both male, dressed in identical uniforms. One of them, the one who had last spoken, was broad through the shoulders but no taller than Caxton. He prodded the vampire’s arm with his shoe. The other one, a big wall of a man, stood back to cover his partner.
She knew with a dread familiarity that they would be dead in seconds if she didn’t act. “State Police!”
she shouted, and ran toward them as fast as her body would allow. She felt drained and unsteady. “Get back!”
The taller policeman looked up at her, his mouth forming around a word. The other bent down to take a closer look at the vampire. It happened then all in a flash. The vampire lifted himself up on his elbows and twisted his head to the side. His mouth opened, revealing his sharp, translucent teeth. They dug into the crouching policeman’s leg and bit down hard.
Blood slapped the front of the car, the legs of the standing policeman, the dark surface of the street. The vampire must have bitten right through a major artery. The crouching policeman screamed and tried to bring his gun down to shoot the vampire, but before he got it halfway down he was dead. He slumped backward and his skull smacked the asphalt with a noise that made Caxton wince.
The surviving policeman jumped back, wheeling his pistol around. Caxton came up to the side of the car and grabbed at his arm, pulling him back still farther.
The vampire dragged himself out from under the car. His mouth and most of his chest were covered in gore. His skin looked less luminously white, had in fact taken on a vague pinkish cast. He looked no less wasted and emaciated than before, but Caxton knew that he would be a dozen times stronger with the officer’s blood in him.
The remaining cop bent his knees and grabbed his weapon in both hands. He sighted down the barrel and put a bullet right into the back of the vampire’s bald head. Caxton watched the vampire’s skin buckle and open, saw the skull underneath crack under the bullet’s impact. The wound closed over as quickly and smoothly as if the bullet had been fired into a bucket full of milk. If the vampire even felt the shot, he showed no sign.
“The heart,” Caxton had time to say. “You have to destroy the heart.” Even as she was speaking, though, the vampire turned slowly around to stare at the local cop. The man’s face convulsed in fear and loathing and then suddenly went slack. His body trembled and his arms fell loose at his sides, his gun forgotten in his hand.
It would have been easy for the vampire to kill Caxton and the other officer just then. He might have done it just to keep them from following him—she’d seen vampires do that before. Instead he rushed over to where the coffin lay just outside of the mortuary’s window. He grabbed up the coffin, turned away from them, and dashed across the street and into the campus of the college.
In the distance a siren started to howl with a series of short wavering cries.
“What’s that?” Caxton asked.
The cop looked around him as if he couldn’t remember where he was. “Tornado alarm,” he said. “They wanted to get the people off the streets in a hurry. It’ll just scare the tourists, but the locals will know to get them to shelter.”
Caxton breathed a sigh of relief. The dispatcher had taken her seriously. There was no danger of a real tornado—the sky was clear and full of stars—but the siren would serve its purpose. “That’s good. Now, what we do next is—”
“Oh, God,” the cop said. “Oh, sweet Jesus—Garrity!” He rushed to his fallen partner’s side and grabbed at his wrists, feeling for a pulse. “He’s dead!”
“Yes,” Caxton said, as gently as she could. “We have to get the thing that killed him.”
“Negative,” the cop said. He reached for his radio and called for an ambulance. Then he switched bands and shouted, “Officer down, one-five-five Carlisle!”
“Good, good,” Caxton said. He was following standing orders, she knew. You didn’t just abandon a dead policeman in the street. But unless they hurried they were going to lose the vampire. “Now let’s go.”
He stared up at her. “Garrity’s been my partner for eight years,” he said, apparently thinking that ended the discussion. Under any other circumstances it probably would have.
Caxton knew she couldn’t afford to wait for the ambulance. “Give me the car keys, then, and you stay here,” she insisted. “I’m a state trooper. Come on! He’s getting away!”
The cop stared at her with wondering eyes for far too long. She could almost see the fog of grief and fear and anger swirling in his brain. Finally he reached down into Garrity’s bloodstained trouser pocket and yanked out a set of car keys. He pressed them into her hand without a word.
Caxton turned on her heel and jumped into the open door of the patrol car. She backed away from the horrible scene in the street—one more chilling vision to give her nightmares for years to come, she thought—and wheeled the car around to face the campus. A narrow road ran through a cluster of long, low buildings. She looked between them as she shot by but couldn’t find any sign of the vampire. A few terrified-looking students were milling on the sidewalks, but they paid little attention to her. They were listening to the tornado siren, which was pulsing out its call faster and faster.
Up ahead the road widened. The signs saidCONSTITUTION AVENUE, but that meant little to Caxton. She pressed down on the gas pedal and the cruiser jumped forward, pushing her back in her seat. The vampire could have turned off any of the side streets she passed, but all she could do was trust her luck and hope she caught sight of him. She had only started to despair when she caught a glimpse of a thin white shape bobbing in the darkness ahead of her. Yes, there—the vampire was still carrying the coffin, running right in the middle of the road ahead of her, his feet flashing and pushing him along far faster than any human could run. Caxton poured on as much speed as she could and slowly gained on him. He was so fast—how was it possible? He had to be a hundred and fifty years old, at least.
Vampires that age should be stuck in their coffins, unable to rise, just like Justinia Malvern. It was impossible. Impossible, and yet clearly it was happening.
18.
