The pool room—she’d heard Tucker mention it, once. She carefully folded up the twinge of guilt she felt for Tucker’s death and scanned the room, looking to see where Deanna might have gone. She sniffed the air. Any scent of chlorine was long gone, and she was pretty sure the pool had dried up. She did smell something nasty and unnatural, though, something that made her nose wrinkle. It was the smell of a vampire. Wherever Deanna had gone she was still nearby. Close enough to strike at any second. Was she playing some kind of game? Caxton didn’t think so.
She had to know more. But she didn’t want to move away from the wall. It felt as if her body had adhered to the tiles. She took one cautious step closer to the edge of the pool and pointed her light down over the concrete lip.
There was a sheer ten foot drop to the bottom of the pool. Down there she saw tiles, more tiles, endless rows of them. They had been white and smooth once but the black mold that had devoured the grout between them had spread across the crazed surface. Time and water had shattered some of the tiles and left the floor of the pool littered with tiny sharp fragments. A standing pool of dark scum filled one corner of the pool. A little to the left she saw a massive bronze drain, completely black with tarnish. Caxton moved her light slowly across the bottom of the pool.
She had to know, she couldn’t just—
Deanna leapt up and nearly snatched the light out of her hand. Her jaws snapped at empty air and she fell back to land on her feet like a predatory cat. She stared up at Caxton with a look of pure and utterly simplistic hatred. There was a smudge of dark muck down the front of her white dress. She had run right through the door, ready to grab Caxton and kill her and feed on her blood. She hadn’t looked where she was going and she’d fallen into the pool. That was the solution to the big mystery.
Caxton stepped back, away from the edge.
Time to run again.
She pushed through the door and back out into the hall. She estimated she had ten or maybe fifteen seconds breathing room before Deanna found a ladder or climbed up out of the shallow end of the pool or figured some other way out. She couldn’t count on any more time than that. With her light on this time she retraced her steps. She had no intention of going back to the invalid ward, though.
It took her three or four seconds to find the door she wanted, the one marked CONSERVATORY. She pushed it open and went through into moonlight so bright it dazzled her eyes.
Behind her she heard Deanna screaming in frustrated rage once more. It wouldn’t be long, now, she told herself. She had better be ready.
59.
The first thing she had to do was make a choice. It wasn’t an easy one. She had to decide she was going to kill Deanna. It didn’t matter what they’d been. It didn’t matter who had failed who. She asked herself what Arkeley would say and she knew, he would say that Deanna was unnatural. A monster.
That didn’t help nearly as much as she wanted it to. She could still love a monster, she knew, if she let herself. She could learn to love Deanna again, she could forgive her for what she’d done, and it wouldn’t even be that hard. But it looked like she wasn’t going to get the chance. Deanna would kill her—unless she killed Deanna first. Her decision was made. She would kill Deanna if she could.
The second thing she had to do was figure out how.
The conservatory greenhouse she’d finally found had once been a long, two-story space where brick walkways wound between tables and espaliers and giant flower pots. The walls and the sloped roof had been constructed of wide panels of plate glass, held in place by a framework of steel girders. It must have been a lovely place once, she thought, a refuge for the dying patients. A place for them to get out of their beds and get some sun. Time and weather had changed the greenhouse, however. The plants had either died or flourished far beyond what the inmates might have ever hoped for. Vines crawled up the glass walls, choking off the grimy panes, littering the brick floor with curled brown debris. The far end of the conservatory had been smashed in all together, perhaps by one of the violent storms that swept through the ridges of Pennsylvania from time to time. Yellow caution tape had been strung back there, tied from one girder to another to keep the staff out. She could see why—long spears of broken glass stood back there, lined up and stood on end, maybe by the same workers who had abandoned all that plaster compound and lumber outside the invalid ward.
Caxton needed a weapon. She waved her light around and found a piece of steel stanchion that had once secured a trellis in place. It looked half rusted and like it might come loose with a couple of kicks. With a rage born of fear and desperation she knocked it loose with her boot. She grabbed it up and immediately felt a little better, even though she knew the sense of security was an illusion. She had a steel bar the length of a riot control baton with one jagged, wicked-looking end. Against a well-fed vampire it might as well have been a piece of rope.
Next she needed to secure the door. She saw a terra cotta pot the size of a refrigerator that she thought she might be able to use as a barricade. She went to grab it, knowing it would take every ounce of her strength to move it, when the door slapped open and Deanna came roaring through.
She was twenty feet away—and then she was right next to Caxton and her pale arm lashed out like a camera flash bulb going off. Caxton’s face went hot with pain and her ears rang as if her head were a bell that had just been struck. She felt herself falling, tumbling backwards. Her nose ached almost immediately—it might be broken. She struggled not to fall over and then, when that became a hopeless endeavor, she struggled to catch herself on her hands.
Deanna reached down and even before she’d struck the ground Caxton was jerked back up into the air. Deanna punched her in the stomach and her breath flew out of her. Nausea wracked her body and she felt like she was going to throw up.
Deanna’s hand came down on her forearm and she felt the bones there creak and rub together unnaturally. She lost control of her hand and her pathetic metal bar went flying, skittering across the rough brick floor.
Caxton couldn’t have kept standing if she’d been propped up. She dropped to her knees, knocking them badly, and grabbed at her stomach because she felt as if she’d been disemboweled and her guts were about to flop out. Deanna hadn’t cut her at all, though. There wasn’t a drop of blood on her, not even from her nose, which was hotly numb and sprained at the very least. She was in horrible pain and she felt like she would never stand up again but she wasn’t bleeding.
Deanna had thought through her attack. She’d been careful to keep Caxton in one piece. “What do you want from me?” Caxton sputtered.
“You know what we want. You know what She wants.” Deanna squatted down in front of Caxton and folded her arms across her out-jutting knees. “We want you to kill yourself and get this over with.”
“That’s what she wants,” Caxton replied. “I asked what you want, Dee.”
Deanna laid her head on her arms and looked away. She had to think about it.
“This is just a little spat, what you and I are having right now. We can get over it and make up. I still love you. I still want to be with you. But there’s no way that can happen as long as you’re still human. So I want you to kill yourself, too.”
Considering the way she felt right then it didn’t sound so bad. It would be an end to all the pain and all the fear. “I would resent you forever,” she said. “I would hate you for what you turned me into.”
Deanna smiled sadly. “No, I’m sorry, but that’s not true. Maybe at first you would be upset. But then you would get hungry. You would want the blood more than you hated me. Once you tasted it—well, once I tasted it I knew that this isn’t a curse. I don’t care, Pumpkin, if I’m going to get old and withered. I don’t care about how bad the blood tastes. When I felt how strong it made me I didn’t care about anything else. It’ll be the same for you. I promise.”
Caxton was pretty sure Deanna was telling the truth.
“But I’m so scared, Dee,” she admitted. “You know about my mom.” A tear gathered in the corner of her eye but she squeezed it back. Too much.
Deanna reached forward and stroked Caxton’s hair. “I know. I know you’re scared. But it only takes a second.” She grabbed Caxton’s arms and lifted her up to her feet. “Come on. I’ll help you.”
“No,” Caxton said. “Let me do it myself.” She was still shaky but she’d recovered enough to walk. She stepped over to where her iron bar lay on the bricks.
