99 Coffins: A Historical Vampire Tale

Her greyhounds were excited to see her, as usual, and started singing as soon as she pulled open the door of their heated kennel. Fifi, her newest acquisition, had to lick her hand for a long time before she would allow Caxton to change her water. The dog had been abused at her former home and she still didn’t trust anyone, even if they were carrying treats.

The dogs all wanted to play, to get out and run, but she didn’t have time. Food and water supplied, a little love spread around the three dogs in the kennel, she moved on. In the driveway she popped open the door of her Mazda and climbed inside.

She took out her BlackBerry and scrolled through her email. After yesterday’s shooting she was on medical leave from work, but there was still something she had to do. She’d been putting it off—frankly, she’d been avoiding it in hopes that it would just go away. It wasn’t exactly something she would enjoy, but it was important. She could go and visit a crippled old man to whom she owed her life several times over.

Jameson Arkeley had been her mentor, once, or at least she had wanted him to play that role. She’d been useful to him in his crusade to drive vampires to extinction. She’d worked with him closely and as a result terrible, truly horrible things had happened to her life. A year later she was just starting to recover from them.

He’d been badly injured back then, so much so that he had been forced to retire from the U.S. Marshals Service. He’d been in the hospital for months having his battered body put back together. Caxton had tried to visit him once, only to be told he didn’t want to see her. That seemed harsh, but not surprising.

He was a tough old bastard and he didn’t waste a lot of time on sentimentality. Since then she hadn’t seen him or heard from him. Then out of nowhere he had emailed her, asking her to come and see him at a hotel in Hanover. There was no other information in the email, just a request for her presence.

Now seemed like the perfect opportunity. She took the car out onto the highway and headed south, down toward the border with Maryland. It was a good hour’s drive, but felt longer. Back when she’d worked on the highway patrol she had thought nothing of being in a car for eight hours a day, driving endless distances up and down the Turnpike. In one short year she’d lost that, and now an hour’s drive seemed to take forever.

In Hanover she pulled into the lot of a Hampton Inn and walked into the lobby. A blue-vested clerk at the reception desk smiled broadly as she walked up and leaned on his counter. “Hi,” she said, “I’m—”

“Officer Caxton, you don’t need to introduce yourself,” he said. “I’m a huge fan.”

Caxton smiled but couldn’t contain a little sigh. Another fan of the TV movie. They all seemed to think that she’d personally had something to do with the production. She hadn’t even seen any money out of it, much less worked on the set. She could barely watch it, herself, because it brought back too many memories.

“Mr. Arkeley is expecting you, of course,” the clerk told her. “Isn’t he great?”

“Are we talking about Jameson Arkeley?” She couldn’t imagine anyone calling the grizzled old vampire killer “great.” It just didn’t fit.

The clerk nodded, though. “Just exactly like they showed him. I remember thinking when I watched the movie that nobody could be that big a jerk, that they must have broadened his character, but—well. I suppose I don’t need to tell you. He’s in room 112. Could you just sign this?”

“Sure,” she said, and looked down, expecting to see a guest registry. Instead the clerk held out a copy of the DVD release of Teeth: The Pennsylvania Vampire Killings . Underneath the title was a picture of the actress who had played Caxton. Nearly a perfect match, except the woman on the cover had blue eyes and bright red lipstick. It looked ridiculous, since she was also wearing a state trooper’s uniform and shooting a giant pistol from the hip.

Caxton shook her head a little but took the pen the clerk offered and scribbled her name across the picture. Another name was already inscribed near the bottom. It was Arkeley’s signature, an almost angry-looking letter A followed by a simple dash. She wondered how many times the clerk had been forced to ask before Arkeley had consented to that.

“You,” the clerk said, “have just made my day. If you guys need anything, complimentary room service, free cable, whatever, just call this desk and ask for Frank, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, and handed him the DVD. Then she turned and headed down a short hallway to the guest rooms. Room 112 was near the end, across from the laundry room. She knocked lightly on the door and then stood back, her hands in her pockets. She would stay an hour, she told herself. No more than that.

The door opened and Arkeley looked out at her. She almost gasped, but covered her shock in time. He had changed considerably since the last time she’d seen him. Back then he was in his early sixties but looked eighty. Killing vampires had left him wizened and with a face so full of wrinkles that his eyes seemed to get lost in the folds.

Now he looked ghastly. The undead servants of the teenaged vampire Kevin Scapegrace had left their mark on him, and even a year later silvery scars covered most of the left half of his face. His left eyelid drooped low over the eye and the left half of his mouth was a J-shaped mass of scar tissue. His buzzed hair was missing in a big swath across the top of his head, where a reddish fissure dug through his scalp.

She looked down, away from his face, but that was almost worse. His left hand was a club of flesh with no fingers. Scapegrace himself had bitten them off, she remembered. Just grabbed them with his teeth and tore them right off. She’d always imagined that they could have been reattached. Apparently she’d been wrong.

The worst change to his appearance, though, didn’t stem from his injuries or his scars. It came from time, and distance. She remembered him, whenever she did think of him, as a giant of a man. He’d been considerably taller than her and much broader through the shoulders. Or at least she remembered him that way. The man standing before her was a little old man, a badly, horribly injured little old man who couldn’t have fought off a teenaged delinquent, much less a rapacious vampire. It seemed impossible that this was the same man she’d once known. Then he opened his mouth and proved her wrong.

“Too long, Trooper,” he said. “You took too damned long getting here. It might already be too late.”

“I was busy,” she said, almost reflexively. She softened a little and tried greeting him again. “Nice to see you, too, Jameson,” she said, and followed him into the hotel room.

6.

It was uneasy work to cross those fields. There was but little moon, & yet starlight was enough to see by. All of us had the fear, for this was the land of partisans and rangers, who would shoot a man’s back should he step away from his fellows & only long enough to heed the call of nature. At the least we could see something. Away from the line & the endless dust of marching the air was almost preternaturally clear. Perhaps that is how Eben Nudd spotted the white demon so easily, though it took pains to hide itself.

Nudd grabbed my arm, without warning, & I nearly jumped. In the darkness every motion was an enemy, & every sound the hoofbeats of a regiment of Reb cavalry. Nudd did not call out, though, or make any sign. He lifted one finger & pointed toward a stand of trees at perhaps twenty-five yards.

For myself I saw but a certain pallor in those woods, at least at first, like a snake of mist coiled up. I squatted down & squinted & thought maybe I saw a pair of eyes there, like the last embers of a campfire. I did not care for their expression. “Is that man watching us?” I asked Eben Nudd, my voice a barest exhalation of air.

“Ayup,” he said, which I sometimes think is half of his vocabulary. Eben Nudd is the very type of a downeaster, formerly a lobsterman, with a craggy face like leather & eyes as pale & clear as morning dew, & he was born, it sometimes seems, with no passion in his breast at all. Many times on many battlefields his coldness had served us well & I trusted him now, even when I liked not what he had to say. “Longer than we seen him, I figger.”

—THE STATEMENT OFALVAGRIEST

7.

Arkeley moved slowly, one leg dragging behind the other. Caxton shuffled along behind him as respectfully as she could. Once he turned to glare back at her, but he said nothing. With a deep grunt he dropped to sit on the edge of a single bed and then ran his good hand over his face as if he were wiping away sweat.

“How have you been?” she asked. “How’s your family? Have you seen them much lately?” He had a wife and