then jump from the top of the assemblage and grab the lip of the wall.
She knew what Arkeley would say. You only have to do it once, and if you fall and break your neck, it won’t matter for very long.
With hands that shook badly she hauled herself up the makeshift scaffolding. She got her feet on the top level, an over-turned wheelbarrow. She put one foot on a wheel and it spun away from her. Carefully, her body trembling like grass in the wind, she got to the top and launched herself up the side of the wall. The heap collapsed beneath her, leaving her ten feet up in the air with no support.
One of her hands found the top of the wall and clamped on, hard. Her other hand swung free but she fought her momentum and made it grab the wall as well. Then she heaved, pulling her own weight up onto the top of the wall. From up there she could see that the courtyard was surrounded by mill buildings on three sides. The fourth side fronted a country lane. A road—which had to lead somewhere. It had to lead to safety. There was a fifteen- foot drop on that side. She didn’t let herself think about it, just lowered herself down as far as she could with her arms and then let go.
The ground came up very hard and very fast. It crushed the wind right out of her, making her broken ribs sing a high plaintive howl of agony but the rest of her seemed okay. No broken limbs, anyway. She rolled to her feet and started running down the road, intending to flag down the first car she saw.
She was free.
Part IV - Scapegrace
43.
His thoughts were red thoughts/ and his teeth were white. -Saki, “Sredni Vashtar”
They had a shower in the back of the local cop shop, with fresh towels and good soap and everything. It wasn’t too surprising—the local chief of police was a woman. Caxton was a little surprised not to find a bathtub, though she supposed that wouldn’t be too professional. She spent a lot longer getting clean than she probably needed to.
While disrobing she found Vesta Polder’s charm still hanging around her neck, grimy with her sweat and general dirt. She cleaned it off and held it up to the light and didn’t see anything different than she had before. It was just a spiral of metal, cool to the touch. Whether it had helped her or failed her she had no idea. Maybe that was how such things worked. Maybe it was entirely psychosomatic, or maybe it had been the only thing that saved her from Reyes’ domination. She imagined she would never know.
By the time she’d finished cleaning up the paramedics had already arrived to take a look at her. They told her she’d been very lucky, that the broken ribs she complained of were just sprained, and would heal nicely in a week or two. She had a lot of minor lacerations and contusions which they painted with antiseptic and put bandages on and then they went away.
Then she dressed up in the street clothes the chief had offered her, which were only a little too big, and sat down in the break room with a yellow legal pad and started trying to write her story down. Caxton had never been very good at long reports. They always made her think of writing papers in her abortive attempt at college. Still, she told the story as plainly as she could, with as much detail as she could remember. She only stopped when Clara arrived.
Clara. Caxton had asked specifically for the sheriff’s photographer to come drive her home. She had called Deanna, but mostly just to make sure she was okay.
Deanna was still in the hospital and couldn’t come for her. Clara had been her second choice, of course. When Clara came into the break room, though, Caxton knew better, just by way she felt seeing Clara again. She held out one bandaged hand and Clara took it, then came closer and just stood there for a moment before awkwardly leaning down and kissing Caxton on the top of her head.
Warmth—stemming from both embarrassment and other causes—spread through Caxton’s face and down her neck.
“We thought you were dead,” Clara said, her voice a little shaky. “We looked all night. Somebody called me yesterday morning because... because they thought I would want to know you were missing, and I came right away and joined the search party. We looked everywhere. We even checked out that steel mill but it was all locked up. Oh my God, I looked that place over myself and I didn’t see anything.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Arkeley said. “They’re masters of concealing their hiding places. They have charms to confuse the mind, especially by moonlight.”
“He insisted on coming along,” Clara said.
Caxton frowned. She wanted to ask what Clara meant, whether Clara had heard Arkeley’s voice as well, but then the Fed walked into the break room and sat down on the edge of the table. Caxton slowly realized he wasn’t just in her head anymore.
It was the real Jameson Arkeley, vampire killer.
It was truly weird to see him again. She had internalized him, made his personality part of her self, and it was the only way she had survived being Reyes’ captive. He had come to represent something vital and necessary to her. The flesh-and-blood Arkeley, by comparison, was someone she didn’t necessarily want to see.
She sighed. She had so much to tell him, though. So much he had to hear.
“Special Deputy,” she said, “I need to make a report to you.”
His face contorted, the wrinkles all running one direction then another as if he couldn’t decide whether to smile or frown. He finally settled on a pained-looking grimace. “I’ve already got the Cliff’s Notes version. You killed Reyes.”
“I waited until dawn and then I burned his heart,” she said.
“Unnecessary understatement is almost as bad as pointless embellishment.”
She stared up at him, her face devoid of any emotion. What she had to say was going to be important to him. “He tried to make me one of them.”
Nobody moved or spoke after that. Nobody dared break the silence until Arkeley reached up and rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “Okay,” he said. “Tell me while we drive.”
She expressed her thanks to the local chief and they headed out back to where Clara’s personal vehicle waited. It was a bright yellow Volkswagen, a New Beetle with a flower vase built into the dashboard. It was a lot like Clara herself—tiny, cute, and it came from a whole different world than the one Caxton inhabited. A world she could visit for a while but she’d never be allowed to stay there. The vampires would make sure of it.
Caxton crawled into the back while Arkeley took the front passenger seat. His fused vertebrae trumped her sprained ribs, he announced. She leaned forward between the front seats and told him about her ordeal. Clara drove not west, toward Harrisburg, but south-east, back toward Kennett Square. Nobody bothered to tell Caxton why and she was too busy talking to ask.
“He used the Silent Rite on me, or at least that’s what Malvern calls it. Just one of a long list of what she calls orisons. Reyes called it a hechizo.” She didn’t mention how she’d learned that word, how she’d tortured a half-dead by pulling his fingers off. She didn’t want Clara to ever know about that. “It’s a spell, or maybe some kind of psychic power. Either way, it’s a violation of the brain. He shoved part of himself in through my eye sockets and took total control of my dreams. He could make me fall asleep against my will and he kept me in and out of the dream state. He showed me a vision of hell, I guess, and waited for me to commit suicide.”
“Hmph,” Arkeley said.
“Something you want to add?” she asked.
He glared back at her with eyes wide as if she’d forgotten her place. She supposed she’d never used that tone with him before. It made her want to say
“Hmph” herself.
“Every vampire I’ve studied killed him- or herself,” he told her. “It’s central to the curse. In Europe every suicide was questionable. They used to bury suicides at crossroads, the thinking being that vampires would be lost when they rose and wouldn’t know the way home. In other times, in other places they buried suicides with their heads cut off and turned upside down or fired a bullet through the heart.”
“A silver bullet?” Clara asked.
“That’s a myth,” Arkeley and Caxton said at once. Another opportunity to glare at each other.
“The curse drives you to take your own life. Once it’s in you the thought starts gnawing at you. You start thinking that all your problems would just go away if you were dead. That’s the last step in the change, and it’s
