Clara had watched the first few donations. Hungry women had shoved their arms through the bars of their cells, more than willing to make a small sacrifice if it meant they didn’t have to go to sleep on an empty stomach. There had been far more volunteers than there were half-deads to take the blood. Nobody had refused—they knew what would happen if they did. The half-deads had moved down the dorm one cell after the other, moving quickly, stabbing needles into arms almost at random. The work clearly delighted them. They had not bothered to replace their needles between donations, or even to clean them off. Clara had protested—she knew little about phlebotomy, but she knew you could get any number of things from a dirty needle. How many of the prisoners had been IV drug users on the outside? How many of them had hepatitis? Or HIV, for that matter? Or who knew what else?
Her pleas had fallen, of course, on deaf ears. Neither the warden nor Malvern seemed to think that the spread of blood-borne illness was a significant problem. Which told Clara something. It told her they didn’t expect the prisoners to live long enough to get sick.
There had been few volunteers for option three. Maybe Malvern and the warden expected that to change. Or maybe they just knew that the prison was a short-term solution to Malvern’s long-term need for blood. Maybe they understood they couldn’t get away with this forever, and that meant they must have a contingency plan for what happened when SWAT teams stormed the prison, as they eventually must.
Clara wondered if she, herself, would live long enough to find out what the contingency plan was.
While she was considering that particular dark thought, a half-dead came into the office and rushed over to Malvern. He whispered in her ear and she smiled.
The warden looked up from her BlackBerry and raised one eyebrow.
“There’s been an escape,” Malvern said, her eye twinkling. She reached for another blood bag.
“Care to share with me?” the warden asked. “It is still, technically, my prison. It sounds like the kind of thing I ought to be aware of.”
“It is a small thing, I assure ye. I sent a company of my slaves to your Special Housing Unit, there to recover the famous killer, Laura Caxton. They failed at this, and she has escaped.”
“What?” the warden asked, jumping up.
Clara’s heart lifted in her chest. Only to fall back again when she heard what Malvern said next.
“It was no more than I expected of her. She has at her advantage resources and craft others cannot match. No lock nor prison gate could hold her long. No half-dead is fair sport for her. I knew she would escape. I planned for her to escape, all this time. ’Tis why we needed her,” she said, and jabbed one bony finger in Clara’s direction. “Be not afraid.”
The warden looked largely unconvinced. “I’ve heard of Caxton. I’ve read about what she’s capable of. You’re sure this is under control?”
Malvern reached for another bag of blood. Her shoulders looked remarkably less bony than they had before. They were almost round. “Lady Fortuna makes sport of any who would claim such,” Malvern said.
“Sometimes,” the warden said, “I wish you would just answer ‘yes’ or ‘no.’
Malvern smiled. And drank down more blood.
A little later the candidates for option three were brought in, one at a time. Clara was gagged so she couldn’t warn them what they were getting themselves into. There were four of them, and they were allowed to sit down on the sofa and given a drink of water. They were tough-looking women, all of them. Two were black, one was a Latina, and one was white, but they all had the same cold eyes that kept moving around the room, taking everything in. They didn’t smile, or thank the half-deads who brought their drinks. They didn’t talk among themselves.
“Forbin,” the warden said, and one of the black women looked up. The warden consulted her BlackBerry and said, “You’re in for murder, is that right?”
“You know it is,” Forbin said. She glanced over at Malvern and licked her lips. “I killed my husband because he was beating me.”
The warden frowned. “It says here that your defense attorney couldn’t present any evidence to back up that claim. The prosecution said you had an argument with him over some money. You wanted to buy some drugs and he wouldn’t give you the money, so you stabbed him. Seventy-one times.” The warden shrugged. “I don’t honestly care. You’re in for twenty-five to life and so far you’ve been a less-than-model prisoner. You’ve stabbed two other inmates since you were inside.”
“Always in self-defense,” Forbin protested.
“Let’s see. You have some family back in the world. An uncle. We’re looking for people without a lot of ties or relationships.”
“He used to rape me, when I was a kid. Then I got too old for him.” Clara’s eyes went wide. Forbin couldn’t be much more than twenty-five. “I ain’t expecting much from him now. There’s nothing out there for me. I’ll be old like you if I ever get out. I can’t get a job with a felony on my jacket, and as soon as I hit the streets I’m gonna start thinking about getting high again. You got something better to offer, I’ll take it.”
Malvern leaned forward across the desk. “You can’t imagine the dark secrets I offer, child. Will ye swear fealty to me tonight?”
“You want my bond? You want respect, yeah? I can give you that.”
“Then come closer. Do not speak. What passes between us is called the Silent Rite, and words would only sully it.” Malvern rose from her seat and bid Forbin to kneel before her. She took Forbin’s face in her thin hands and stared deeply into her eyes. For a moment there was no sound at all in the warden’s office. It felt like the air had congealed and gone bad.
Malvern was passing on her curse. This was option three. If the prisoners chose it, they didn’t have to donate blood. Instead they could take their own lives—and tomorrow night, they could rise again, as vampires. As part of Malvern’s new brood.
When the rite was finished Forbin was weeping. Malvern opened a drawer of the desk and took out a small glass bottle with a rubber dropper. It was full of straw-colored liquid Clara couldn’t identify, but she was pretty sure she knew what it was.
Behind Forbin the office door opened quietly and a pair of half-deads came in carrying a simple pine box. A coffin. Forbin didn’t even look at it. She just opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue.
The curse itself wasn’t enough to make someone a vampire. They also had to die by their own hand. The curse helped with that—it got inside your soul, made you want to die, to be reborn. You could fight it off if your will was strong enough, or if you had enough to live for. Forbin didn’t even try.
The liquid in the bottle must have been some kind of very strong, very fast-acting poison. Malvern leaned forward and handed the dropper to Forbin. The prisoner put the drops on her tongue, put the dropper back on the desk, then sat back on her heels and closed her eyes.
After a minute or two, she started to twitch. Her arm jumped at her side. Her head rocked on her neck. The twitching got worse and graduated to full-blown convulsions—but only for a few seconds. Then Forbin’s face turned purple with congested blood and she fell backward. The two half-deads caught her easily and laid her out in the coffin. Then they pushed the lid onto the coffin and carried it away again, with Forbin inside.
It could be that easy.
The other three women sitting on the couch watched it all without a word. Their eyes took it all in, measuring, evaluating. They were clearly working out in their heads whether it was worth it or not to follow the same path.
The warden cleared her throat. “Hauser,” she said, and the white woman stood up and came to kneel before Malvern. She had a tattoo running down the side of her neck that read 100% PURE. Clara had worked in law enforcement long enough to know what that meant. Hauser was a member of the Aryan Brotherhood, most likely the girlfriend or sister of one of the white supremacist gang.
“I’m not afraid,” she said, looking straight at Malvern. “Let’s get on with it.”
The warden looked at her handheld. “Two different counts of vehicular homicide—that’s pretty suspicious. You ran down an eight-year-old black boy with your van, and got a light sentence because you claimed you merely lost control of the vehicle. Then when you did it again, less than a year later, the judge decided that you either desperately needed to tune up your brakes, or that maybe there was something more to the case than met the eye.”
“I’m not sorry, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Malvern grinned wickedly.
