Then he sat up and roared, a long, hoarse noise I could barely stand to hear. His whole body shook, even as it grew more and more solid, more complete. Finally he leaped up out of the coffin and stood hunched over in the cavern, looking like he had no idea where he was. He picked up the coffin and smashed it against the wall. I still don’t know whether he was aware for the whole time he was in that box, or whether it was like a long sleep. He didn’t seem to want to spend another second inside it, however.”
Eventually Geistdoerfer got the bandage loose. It fell in a bloody, sticky heap on his desk. What was revealed beneath looked less like a human arm than a raw leg of lamb after a dog got through with it.
There were still three fingers on his hand, but most of his wrist and forearm had been gnawed away. His thumb was missing altogether. A little blood welled out of the wound as Geistdoerfer flexed the muscles remaining to him.
When the blood glistened in the open air, the hands holding down Caxton constricted. The grip on her arms grew stronger. She did feel the vampire breathe then—a long, cold sigh of desire that drifted down her neck like a tendril of fog.
“He struck me as hungry, so I offered him a drink,” Geistdoerfer explained. “He was a bit more eager than either of us expected. He has apologized, of course, but I’m not sure that will be enough. I want you to know something, Trooper. I want you to know I had no idea what he would be like. After being buried, tucked away for so long—and he looked so thin, so cadaverously thin. I had no idea if he could even walk under his own power, or how strong he could really be.”
Most people didn’t. It was one reason that people like Arkeley and Caxton had to exist, because most people had no idea what vampires were capable of. You underestimated them at your peril—more often than not, your mortal peril.
“After this happened I wanted to go to the hospital, naturally. I fear I screamed quite a bit. He wouldn’t let me go. He didn’t want to let me get that far out of his sight. I have a friend, a professor here, who gave me the pills I’ve been taking. She has a bad back, but it only bothers her sometimes, and for now she was willing to share. She had plenty of questions herself, but I knew how to fend her off.”
Geistdoerfer looked up at her. “You’ve gone very quiet,” he noticed.
“She knows what’s coming,” the vampire said. His voice was a growl, an inhuman burr in her left ear.
She closed her eyes as he moved his thick jaw across her neck. She could feel the hardness of his teeth, feel the cold triangular shapes of them pressing against her warm flesh. None of them pricked her, though. He was holding himself back. If he drew her blood, he might not be able to resist his unnatural urge to kill her. “Forgive me if I take a liberty, Miss,” he said, much softer than before. His hand, cold and clammy, stole around the side of her neck. His fingers drew across her throat, then reached down into the collar of her shirt.
“I see you’ve not replaced your amulet,” he said in her ear. His breath stank, though not of blood. It smelled like an open grave. It filled up her nose and her mouth and made her want to pull away.
Still she said nothing.
She was far too scared to speak.
Geistdoerfer replaced his bandage with fresh linen, wrapping it carefully and not too tightly around his ruined arm. Halfway through he had to stop and take some more pills. Finally he slipped his arm back into its sling, and then he rose from the desk and came around to stand next to her.
“I’m going to take your sidearm, now,” he told her. He sounded truly contrite, but she wasn’t about to forgive Geistdoerfer for what he’d done. Garrity’s widow wouldn’t have forgiven him, she knew. With his good hand he drew her Beretta out of its holster and laid it on the desk, well away from her hands.
He took the can of pepper spray from her belt and pushed it into his own pants pocket. His hand moved upward, touching the pockets of her coat. He took away her handcuffs and her flashlight. He found the lump of her cell phone next and squeezed it experimentally. He left it where it was. She glanced up, trying to catch his eyes, but his face revealed nothing.
32.
—THE STATEMENT OFALVAGRIEST
33.
“You’ve been hiding him here since you found him. In these offices, somewhere,” she said.
“Let me show you,” Geistdoerfer said.
The vampire let go of her once she’d been disarmed. Geistdoerfer picked up the Beretta and gestured at her with it, like something out of an old black-and-white movie. She got the point, and stood up slowly, keeping her hands high and visible.
They walked out of the office and down a darkened corridor. Geistdoerfer lowered the pistol as he opened a door markedCWES LAB . She watched the gun bob back and forth in his hand, point at the floor. She could have made a grab for it. Then she looked at the vampire.
His face was thin and sharp, his eyes tiny and beadlike. His teeth glimmered in the half-darkness.
If she made any sudden moves, she knew, he could tear her to pieces in the space between two heartbeats.
Eventually Geistdoerfer got the door open.
The three of them walked inside, into a room full of tables. Bits of metal and whitened lead bullets lay spread out on the tables. One held an enormous barrel, a hogshead, Caxton believed it was called. Its wood was silver with age and its hoops had turned to dull rust, but a black crust of tar held it in one piece. Another table held a single pair of decaying pants. Probably the same pants the vampire had worn when she’d seen him the night before. They were laid out carefully, as if a team of archaeologists had been going over them all day with magnifying glasses and dental picks. Geistdoerfer might have done just that, she realized.
In the center of the room stood an enormous set sink made of brushed aluminum. It was as big as a bathtub. “We’re set up here to handle human remains, though I doubt the kind alumnus who funded this lab had quite our distinguished guest in mind.”
Caxton leaned over the tub and smelled something awful inside. She looked closer, but only found a few maggots crawling blindly across the bottom of the sink.
“You’ve been sleeping in this tub,” she said to the vampire. Most animals bolted in terror at the first sign of a vampire. Insects, and especially maggots, were the most notorious exception. During the day a vampire’s body didn’t just slumber, it liquefied. Maggots knew a free meal when they saw one.
“He kept saying he needed something better, that he needed a real coffin. Last night he went out to find one. Unfortunately you happened to be there at just the wrong time.”
Or the right time, she thought. The right time to discover the weird game the archaeologist was playing.
That discovery was probably going to get her killed, but it meant the vampire wouldn’t be able to hide much longer. How many people knew where she was? Half the police department knew she’d set up this appointment. When she failed to appear at the police station that night the local cops would start to put the pieces together. This
