none. A row of windows lined the far side of the room, but they were not made to open, and Caxton knew they, like all of the HQ’s ground-floor windows, were built of bullet-resistant glass half an inch thick. She couldn’t just throw a chair through one of them and escape that way.
Jameson had taught her never to barricade herself in a room with no other exit. She’d forgotten that lesson in her panic. She cursed herself as she heard knives and sickles thudding against the wooden door, gouging away at it.
“Your father,” Caxton gasped, watching the door jump and shake, “wants you something fierce.”
“But you’re not going to let him take me, are you?” Simon demanded.
Caxton shook her head and just breathed for a second. “Kid, I can’t promise you anything. But I’ll do my best to protect you.”
Outside, in the hallway, she heard someone screaming. Not the high-pitched squeal of a half-dead, either.
The scream cut off abruptly with the sound of gunshots and Caxton flinched. Troopers—good people, all— were fighting out there, maybe some of them were dying, and she couldn’t help them. She didn’t even have a sidearm, just a glorified nightstick.
The half-deads outside slammed against the door with their weapons, their shoulders, the whole weight of their bodies. She could hear them out there urging each other on. She thought she could hear Vesta shouting orders. The door wasn’t going to last forever. “There are troopers out there, but I think they’re outnumbered. I don’t think we can just assume they’ll come rescue us.”
“We have to get out,” Simon said. His eyes were wide when he stared at her. “We have to get out of here. He’ll kill me. He’ll kill me!” There were more gunshots, and he yelped as if he’d been hit himself.
“Oh my God. Oh my God. I’m going to die, I’m going to die! I’m going to—”
Caxton slapped him hard across his face. She was a strong woman and she knocked him down, sent him sprawling across a ratty old armchair. He grabbed at his cheek and looked up at her, suddenly much calmer. “Thanks,” he said.
“You were getting really annoying,” Caxton said.
The hammering and gouging at the door stopped suddenly and Caxton heard a half-dead outside whisper, “Get back, she’s coming.” Maybe Vesta Polder knew some kind of door-opening spell, she thought, though in her experience Vesta’s talents had never before lent themselves to such mundane uses.
Caxton moved away from the door in any case, her ASP baton up and ready.
She glanced at Simon, who was quick to get behind her. The boy started to say something, but then the door twisted in its frame with a horrible groaning sound as its hinges were strained and finally snapped.
The door disappeared, and the couch they’d shoved in front of it went flying into the room and slammed into a vending machine hard enough to make its lighted front crack and go dim.
A moment later a vampire walked into the room.
Chapter 50.
Caxton swung her baton, but before it could connect it was wrenched painfully from her hand and thrown across the room. She could feel a blow coming—she could feel the cold, unnatural aura of the vampire moving toward her at high speed, and she tried to roll away from it, but her spine twisted in such a way to make her scream and suddenly she was on her back on the linoleum tiles, looking up at the fluorescent light fixtures.
The vampire had one slender foot on her throat. The pressure on her trachea made it impossible to cry out, but she could still breathe a little, a shallow whistling breath that left her with stars in her vision. She tried to look up at the vampire, tried to see who it could be.
Losing Vesta had been bad enough. Caxton didn’t have enough friends that she could afford to lose one more.
The vampire holding her down, however, was female. Thin, smaller than the usual blood-sucker, with refined features that would have been beautiful if not for the jagged teeth deforming her lips. Caxton looked lower and saw she was dressed in some kind of sack or a loose-fitting sheath dress made of white cotton and duct tape, stained down the front with a streak of clotted blood.
It wasn’t a dress at all, she realized. It was the remains of a shroud.
“Raleigh?” Simon asked, cowering near where Caxton lay.
“Hello, Simon,” the vampire growled. “Long time no see.” Then she reached over and punched her brother in the side of the head. His eyes rolled up and he fell over, twitching and drooling a little.
“I didn’t kill him,” Raleigh said, looking down with red eyes into Caxton’s face. “I’m not
Caxton tried to creak out some words, though she wasn’t sure what she meant to say.
“Sorry,” Raleigh said, and lifted her foot away from Caxton’s neck.
“You’ve fed,” Caxton gurgled. She nodded at the blood down the front of Raleigh’s makeshift dress.
“Yes,” Raleigh agreed. “One of your colleagues got in my way. I was hungry. It wasn’t something I planned.”
“Do you regret it?” Caxton asked.
“Not much.”
“That’s what makes you evil,” Caxton told her.
The vampire’s eyes narrowed.
“I waited for you to come back to life. I waited until the sun was completely down. Were you faking it?”
“Uh-huh,” Raleigh said, with a smile. “Daddy and I have been talking about it for days. He could speak into my mind, when I was living, but it was like someone whispering in another room. Now he’s with me all the time.” The smile broadened. “It’s nice.”
“How long did you have this planned out? Faking your death—I mean, faking your continued death? The attack on this building?”
“Daddy came to me a couple weeks ago. Even before I met you. Everything since then has been an act.
Lying there under that sheet was tough. It was so hard not moving, not even stretching, but I did it.
Daddy knew you would never let me out of your sight—this was the only way.”
“You accepted the curse that long ago? Then you lied to me, when I reached out to you for help. You told me you hadn’t spoken with your father in six months. That’s evil, too.”
The girl’s face fell. It was a dangerous game, but Caxton had to try to reason with her. “Listen, it’s not too late. After a certain time every vampire is the same, they lose their respect for human life and they become sociopaths. But I know you’re not one of them yet. There’s still plenty of humanity in you. Turn yourself in. Or if not that, at least help me destroy your father.”
The vampire had been standing up. Instantly she dropped to the floor, propping herself up on her arms until her face was hovering over Caxton’s. Close enough that Caxton’s whole body shivered with the creeping horror of almost being touched.
“At the convent, they used to ask me why I ever tried heroin in the first place. Why would I try something so addictive and dangerous, when I knew the risks? I told them, the world hurts, but drugs feel good. It’s a no-brainer. The only downside was that every time I shot up I got weaker. Now I’ve got blood. Blood feels good. And it makes me stronger. I think I’ll stick with the plan.”
She jumped back up to her feet, then reached down and picked Simon up easily in her arms.
“When you begged him not to kill me—was that an act?”
The vampire looked up at the ceiling. “No,” she sighed. “No. You’d been nice to me. Nicer than most people in my life. You wanted to protect me. You thought I was worth saving. Just like Daddy.”
“I still think so. I can’t give you your life back, but I can preserve what’s left of your soul,” Caxton pleaded.
