a round and saw the vampire’s red eyes go wide. His brain understood what was happening but his hands kept going for the skull. He caught it and crushed it unthinkingly between his pale fingers. Fragments of yellow bone and clods of dirt swarming with worms trickled down the front of his shirt.
The shrieking stopped.
Caxton pressed the barrel of the pistol against his chest and fired. He fell backwards, his head smashing on the concrete floor. His eyes swiveled around to fix on her. “Pretty good,” he said, and tried to get a knee under himself so he could rise and kill her. His limbs didn’t seem to want to cooperate. “Shit,” he said, and fell back.
“Go! Get help!” Hazlitt shouted at the half-deads. One of them rushed for the far exit, for the darkness there. Caxton pivoted on her heel and snapped off a shot and the half-dead’s back erupted in a cloud of rotten flesh and torn clothing. She turned to shoot the next one but it was gone, already having fled the room. The third half-dead crouched down on the floor and hugged his knees.
She turned to Hazlitt next. She didn’t point her weapon at him—you never pointed a weapon at a human being until you were prepared to shoot them. He stepped behind a cart of medical instruments and raised his hands. He was too smart, she decided, to actually try something.
Scapegrace had rolled over onto his side and was pushing himself up into a sitting posture when she looked again. His eyes wouldn’t meet hers. “You nicked it,” he said.
“What?”
“You nicked my heart,” he finished. He pushed upward with one knee but his arms were trembling. “That was pretty tricky.” He got up on both knees. “You waited until I’d given all my blood to Her. You waited for the moment when I would be at my weakest. Pretty tricky. Listen,” he said, rising to his feet. He lifted his hands into plain sight. “I’ll go quietly, okay? Don’t kill me.” He wheezed as he spoke—had she punctured one of his lungs? She would have given anything for a chest x-ray just then. “Please,” he continued. “You can lock me away forever, whatever you want.
But please don’t kill me. I’m not even eighteen years old.”
“Don’t,” Arkeley breathed behind her. Don’t listen, he was trying to say. Arkeley.
Was he still alive? He wouldn’t be for long unless she got him down and bandaged his wounds. She turned half around to look at him.
It was the opening Scapegrace had been waiting for. He flew across the room, a pale streak of lightning. Red blood erupted from Hazlitt’s throat and chin as the vampire tore off half of the doctor’s neck. Hazlitt gurgled out a scream. Caxton fired a round into the back of Scapegrace’s head, just by instinct. It didn’t even slow him down. She fired again into his back but he just redoubled his efforts, pressing his face and his rows of triangular teeth deep into the hole he’d made in Hazlitt’s neck.
Every drop of blood he drank would make Scapegrace stronger. He would be bulletproof in seconds. She needed to kill him instantly. Carefully, holding her breath, she lined up another shot and fired through the back of his t-shirt. The bullet tore through the vampire’s body and made him double over in howling pain. He staggered away from Hazlitt and fell across a rack of IV stands. They clattered to the floor as his hands clutched and clutched at nothing, at air. His legs shook like rubber bands and he collapsed to the floor and finally, convulsively, died.
Hazlitt took one last look around the room, his face and chest and the whole front of his body one continuous sheet of flowing blood. Then he slumped to the floor as well, just as dead as the vampire.
The half-dead in the corner jumped up and started running for the door. Caxton fired reflexively and missed him. She fired again and pulverized his left arm. The half-dead started whining in pain but he didn’t stop. She fired a third time and his whole body fell apart in pieces.
Part V - Malvern
54.
There's a stake in your fat black heart / And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you. / They always knew it was you.
-Sylvia Plath, 'Daddy'
“Five,” Arkeley moaned.
She shoved the handgun into the empty holster at her belt. It almost fit. With the step-ladder and with hands that shook badly she managed to lower Arkeley onto the floor. She found rolls of gauze and surgical tape in a rolling cart.
“Five,” he said again, as if he’d just remembered something.
His injuries were terrible. The half-deads had really worked him over—his skin was a maze of cuts, most of them inflamed, and the skin that wasn’t sliced or torn was bruised and even chewed in places. His eyes were swollen shut and his mouth was black and swollen with bruising. Then of course there were the fingers that Scapegrace had torn off. Caxton wrapped his left hand in gauze that instantly turned red with bright arterial blood. She wound more and more bandaging around the wound, tight but not too tight. At least it was his left hand. He would still have the use of his right hand. He could still shoot.
Except—he wasn’t doing any shooting anymore. Not that night, probably not for months. He couldn’t even sit up.
A cold flash went through her when she realized she had been expecting him to get up this whole time and reclaim his gun. She had really thought that her part was done and she could let him mop up.
“Five,” he mumbled.
“Shh,” she said.
It wasn’t going to happen. He wasn’t going to fight the half-deads. He wasn’t going to walk out of Arabella Furnace. It was up to her to get out, to run and get help. Maybe—maybe—she could save his life but it was all up to her.
“Five.”
“Okay already,” she said. “Five what? Five half-deads? I think there were more than that when I came in. If you tell me there are five active vampires here I’m going to soil my uniform.” She smiled and patted his good hand.
He sucked in a painful breath and then spoke all in a rush. “There’s only one more active vampire,” he said. He waited a moment, then finished. “There are five bullets remaining in your clip.”
Slowly she removed the Glock from her belt. She ejected the clip and counted the remaining rounds. There were only five left, just as he had said. That was impossible—she couldn’t possibly have already fired eight bullets, could she? She went over the recent combat in her head and realized she had.
She slipped the clip back into the handgun and holstered it again.
“Be more careful,” he said, his head rolling back and forth. “From now on.”
She nodded in agreement. He probably didn’t see it, though, because just then the lights went out.
It happened so quickly Caxton thought it had to be in her head. She blinked her eyes but the blue light didn’t come back. Featureless darkness filled all the available space around her, so thick she felt as if it were rubbing on her dry eyeballs.
“Oh God,” she said. “They know. They know something’s up—what do we do now?”
Arkeley didn’t answer. She reached over and grabbed his bloody wrist. He had a pulse, still, but he must have fallen unconscious.
Caxton searched her pockets, hoping she had some kind of light source on her.
Something—anything. Scapegrace had taken most of her gadgets away from her, cellphone, PDA, handcuffs. “Oh, thank you,” Caxton whispered, not knowing who she was talking to. The vampire had ignored her mini-Maglite. He’d probably figured she couldn’t hurt anyone with it. She took it out and pointed it at Arkeley. The miniature flashlight spat out a foggy cone of pale blue illumination that dazzled her eyes for a second. It gave off just enough light for her to see that he was still breathing.
There was a telephone mounted on one wall. She grabbed the handset and pressed it to her ear. No dial tone rewarded her. She flicked the hook a couple of dozen times, trying to make it work, but no dice. Whoever cut the power must have cut the sanatorium’s phone lines, too.
Which meant they had to know everything. They knew where she was and what her first move would be.
If the half-deads—and the remaining vampire—knew she was in Malvern’s ward then her first goal had to be
