half-dead had come to her house. Her house specifically.
If it had gone after Wright or Leuski, that might have made a certain amount of sense. Those two had chased the thing right into barbed wire. But why her? She’d been running the Intoxilyzer. She’d been in the trailer the whole time. It just didn’t make sense.
If she concentrated very hard she could not ask herself the question for whole long minutes at a time. She refused to let it rattle her. She was a State Trooper, for fuck’s sake. A soldier of the law—that’s what they called her when she graduated from the academy. A soldier, and soldiers don’t panic just because somebody tries to give them a little scare. She told herself that enough times to start believing it.
She read case reports and pursuit logs to fill the time, which was only slightly less boring than watching the smokers come in and out. Arkeley came for her at three o’clock. By that point she was ready to sign out and go home. “I’ve been waiting here all day,” she told him when he stepped through the back door to collect her.
“I’ve spent all day getting search warrants and court orders. Which of us had more fun today, I wonder?”
“Stop talking to me like I’m a child,” she demanded.
His smile only deepened.
He lead her up to the Commissioner’s office, a corner office with two windows on the top floor. The other two walls were lined with the deer antlers and the head of one very large twelve-point buck. A rack of antique fowling guns sat immediately behind the desk as if the Commissioner wanted to be able to perforate anyone who brought him news he didn’t like.
Arkeley would have been a good candidate. After she’d finished giving her report and Arkeley had made an introductory statement the Commissioner gave him a look of pure hatred. “I don’t like this, but you probably already guessed as much. The nastiest, ugliest multiple homicide in decades and you just come in and take it away from us. A US Marshal. You guys guard courthouses,” he said, leaning way back in his chair. He was bald on top but it hadn’t reached his forehead yet. The bottom button of his uniform strained a little at keeping his gut in. He had a full Colonel’s birds on his shoulders, though, so Caxton stood at attention the whole time he was talking.
Arkeley sat in his chair as if his anatomy was constructed for some other kind of conveyance, as if his spine didn’t bend properly. “We also capture the majority of federal fugitives,” he told the Commissioner.
“Trooper,” the Commissioner said, without looking at her. “What do you think of this piece of shit? Should I run him out of town?”
She was pretty sure it was a rhetorical question but she answered anyway. “Sir,”
she said, “he’s the only living American to have successfully hunted vampires, Sir.”
She stayed at attention, staring up at the brim of her hat like she’d been taught.
The Commissioner sighed. “I could block this.” He gestured at the paperwork spread across his desk. Most of it was signed by the Lieutenant Governor. “I could hold it all up, demand verification, demand copies in triplicate. I could stall your investigation long enough for my own boys to take care of the vampire.”
“In which case, young man, more than a few people would die. Not only that, they would die in a truly horrible way.” Arkeley wasn’t smiling when he said it.
“There’s a cycle to these things. At first the vampires try to hide among us. They disguise themselves and bury their kills in privacy and seclusion. But over time the bloodlust grows. They need more and more blood every night to maintain their un-life. Soon they forget why they were trying to be discrete. And then they just start killing wholesale, with no moral compunction and no mercy. Until this vampire is brought down the body count will continue to rise.”
“Why have you got such a hard-on for this?” the Commissioner demanded.
“You’re willing to make enemies, just so you can horn in on this.”
“If you’re asking why I chose to take this case I have my own reasons and I’m not going to share them with you.” Arkeley stood up and picked his papers off the desk one at a time. “Now, if you’re done pissing on my shoes, there are some things I need. I’d like to speak with your armorer. I need a vehicle, preferably a patrol car.
And I need a liaison, someone who can coordinate operations between the various local police agencies. A partner, if you will.”
“Yeah, alright.” The Commissioner leaned forward and tapped a few keys on his computer. “I’ve got a couple guys for you, real hotshots from the Criminal Investigations Unit. Cowboy types, grew up in the mountains and learned how to shoot before they started playing with themselves. I’ve got six names to start—”
“No,” Arkeley said. The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees. At least it felt that way to Caxton. “You misunderstood. I didn’t ask to be assigned someone.
I’ve already picked my liaison. I’m taking her.”
Caxton was looking at her hat. She didn’t see Arkeley point. It took her way too long to realize he meant he wanted her to ride with him.
“Beg your pardon, sir,” she said, when the rushing in her ears had passed, “but I’m a Patrol Unit. Highway Patrol,” she reiterated. “I don’t feel I’d be appropriate for what you want.”
For once at least it seemed he was willing to explain a decision. “You said I was the only living American to kill a vampire. You must have read something about me,”
he told her.
She’d read everything she could find while she waited for him to show up. It wasn’t much. “I read your incident report on the Piter Lares case, yes, sir.”
“Then you’re the second-best informed person in this building. Commissioner, I want you to release her from her current duties.”
“For how long?” the Commissioner asked.
“Until I’m done with her. Now. You,” he said, looking at Caxton, “follow me and stay close. I keep a certain steady pace and I expect you to match me or you’ll forever be asking me to slow down.”
She looked at the Commissioner but he just shrugged. “He’s a Fed,” his expression seemed to say. “What are you going to do?”
Arkeley lead her down to the Area Response Team’s firing range out back. The ART was the anti-terrorism squad, but they were also the ones who were called in to break up protests in the Capital. They had the equipment and the tactics for mass arrests and crowd control and they had a sizeable budget for less lethal weapons.
Which Caxton knew used to be called non-lethal weapons, until somebody got accidentally killed. The ART guys were all gun nuts and gadget freaks and had an experimental weapons firing range behind the HQ where they could test out their toys before they actually had to deploy them. It also let them get in a little target shooting whenever they got the itch. Caxton kept her hands over her ears as they came up on the range officer, who was firing what looked like an antique musket. It was loud enough to make her think he must be using black powder.
Arkeley eventually yelled loud enough to get the ranger officer’s attention. The RO took off his ear protectors and the two men had a brief discussion. Whatever Arkeley said made the RO snort in laughter, but he disappeared into an ammunition shed and came back out with a box of bullets.
Arkeley lined up thirteen of them on the firing stand and carefully, methodically loaded the magazine of his weapon. It was a Glock 23, Caxton saw. More firepower than most police handguns but it was no hand cannon. “You only load thirteen?” she asked, looking over his shoulder.
“That’s the capacity of the magazine,” he said, his voice thick with condescension. It was going to take a lot to warm up to this guy.
“Most people would load an extra round in the chamber, so they’re ready to shoot at a second’s notice. I do,” she said, patting the Beretta 92 on her belt.
“Tell me, do you not wear a seat belt while you’re driving, so you can save half a second when you get in and out of your car?”
Caxton frowned and wanted to spit. She dug one of the bullets out of the box and studied it. The slugs were semi-jacketed lead, about what she had expected and not enough to make the Range Officer so excited. Two perpendicular cuts had been made in the nose of each round, forming a perfect cross. She thought maybe she’d caught him in a mistake. “I read your report—you said crosses had no effects on vampires.”
“Luckily for me they work wonders on bullets.” Arkeley shouted to clear the range and sighted on a target
