Caxton barely had time to dodge before the vampire swept past and up the stairs. Cursing—silently this time—she lifted her weapon again and dashed up after him, though he had already disappeared into the gallery. At the top of the stairs she swung around, covering the corners of the room. She didn’t see him.
There were two exits from the gallery—back through the maze of pasteboard walls and the exhibits, or out through a clearly marked exit door that returned visitors to the lobby. She dashed through the latter, knowing she was falling behind, that he was getting away. The velvet rope across the staircase had been torn from its mountings and she knew he had gone up.
Where was Arkeley, she wondered? Hopefully he’d run for safety. As far as she knew he didn’t have another weapon, and she didn’t think he’d be stupid enough to try to stop the vampire with his bare hands. It was up to her.
She took the stairs two and three at a time, breath pounding out of her mouth, sighing back in. Her body felt tight and constricted and she knew her adrenaline was starting to wear off. That was alright—she could replace it with raw, cold fear.
At the top of the stairs she dashed into a library, which must have been a beautiful room by daylight. In the orange streetlight that streamed through its tall windows, the rows of books and leather-upholstered armchairs looked rotten and decayed, as if the room had been abandoned to the elements for hundreds of years. To her left a door still swung on its hinges and she raced through. Beyond was a corridor that ran the length of the building, windows lining one side, the other lined with doors. Small marble tables stood between the doors. A pair of black leather driving gloves lay forgotten on the table nearest to her.
Four doors, she counted, and another staircase at the far end, leading down. The vampire could have used any of them.
She kept her back to the windows as she crab-walked slowly down the length of the hall. If he had taken the far stairs he was already gone, she knew. He would have fled through a back exit and she would never catch him. If he had taken one of the doors he might still be in the building, might in fact have trapped himself in a dead end. At the first door she reached out, touched the polished wood, tapped the doorknob with trembling fingers. If the vampire had been there recently she thought the knob might feel cold to the touch or perhaps the fine downy hairs on her hand would stand up. She felt no sense of unnatural presence there, however.
The next door led into an office, with the wordDIRECTOR in gold letters painted on the wood. Caxton touched the knob. Nothing; no sense of unease or disgust. She turned it slowly. It let out a sharp metallic creak and she stopped immediately. Had she felt something move nearby, something hidden in the dark?
She held herself as perfectly still as she knew how, tried to not even breathe.
What was it? There, she thought, a puff of breeze had caressed her cheek. She whirled around, ready to fire instantly, only to see that one of the windows was open a crack. A very delicate draft was coming through, nothing more.
Caxton bit her lip and moved to the third doorway. Her feet made only very soft sounds on the carpet.
She reached out her hand toward the knob, fear making her arm shake, and let her fingertips graze the brass knob ever so gently.
Nothing.
She breathed out, let go a little of her muscular tension. One more door to check. If there was nothing there then at least she would know she was safe, that the vampire was gone and that she wasn’t going to die that night. She moved quickly toward the fourth door, reaching for its knob.
Behind her the window crashed open, glass cracking with a jarring sound. A white mass shot through like a giant cannonball and blasted down the hall right toward her. Before she could even think the vampire had one hand at her throat. He smashed her backward against one of the marble tables, its edge digging painfully into her left kidney. He lifted her up again and then smashed her against the floor until her bones rattled inside her flesh. Only the thick carpeting kept her leg and arm from snapping on impact. He picked her up again and held her in the air, crushing her neck muscles with his powerful fingers. It felt like she’d had a handful of knives jabbed down her throat. She couldn’t talk—couldn’t breathe. If he closed his hand even a fraction of an inch more, she would die. Blackness swam through her vision as if big blobs of oil were dancing on the surface of her eyes.
He had spared her life once because she was a woman. He’d let her live a second time because she was useful to him, because she could drive a car. Clearly his patience was all used up.
Laura Caxton would have died then and there if it hadn’t been for the Mutter’s night watchman. He stepped out of the fourth door just then, perhaps alerted by the gasping, choking noises Caxton was making, and shone his flashlight right into the vampire’s eyes.
The vampire screamed in pain. He was a nocturnal creature, and that much light hurt him far more than bullets. He dropped her, his arms flying up to protect his sensitive eyes from the bright light. In another second he was gone, down the back stairs and away.
40.
—THE STATEMENT OFALVAGRIEST
41.
The night watchman—his name tag readHAROLD —helped her sit up and lean back against the wall.
Caxton rubbed at her throat, trying to get circulation back into the crushed muscles there. “You okay?”
he asked her over and over, as if through sheer repetition he could make it so. “That guy coulda killed us both, and easy!”
That was true. The light had hurt the vampire, but only momentarily. He could have smashed it and then returned to his slaughter. He’d been too smart to take the chance, though. He couldn’t have known if Harold was armed, or if a platoon of police were behind him. She tried to explain that to the night watchman, and found she couldn’t. It felt as if her larynx were being rubbed against a cheese grater. She could breathe, though. Her lungs were heaving up and down just fine. So she nodded. She slipped the safety of Arkeley’s Glock back on and shoved the heavy pistol into her empty holster. It didn’t quite fit—the leather holster wasn’t designed for that particular model of handgun. After trying to force it, she finally just let it hang out a little.
Caxton rubbed at her eyes, her mouth. She let her body calm down on its own, let it take its time in doing so. She’d been very, very close to death. Well, it wasn’t the first time. She knew what to do, which was to try to take it
