The warden stared at Gert as if she were some kind of rare insect. Fascinating and repellent at the same time. “Uh-oh,” she said. “Someone’s been naughty. The Hub is where every long corridor in the prison comes together. It’s designed as a choke point. In case a riot breaks out in one dorm, we can lock down the Hub and it can’t spread to any other wing. Believe me, you won’t get through it.”
“Even if I use you as a hostage?” Caxton asked.
“That would be a good plan, normally. With Malvern in her coffin I’m in charge, and if I told the half-deads down there to back off, they would have to. You would march right through there, presumably with one arm around my neck, right? Then I could unlock the armory door for you, and you could go in and get all the guns you wanted. There’s a problem with that, however.”
“Oh?” Caxton asked.
“Yes. I’m not going to let you take me hostage.”
Caxton steadied her grip on the shotgun and leaned forward into a firing stance.
The warden leaned forward into the light. For the first time Caxton saw that one of her eyes was missing, a ragged hole in her face ringed with crusted blood. It wasn’t even covered by a bandage. “I’ve had one shit day,” the warden said. She pulled a pistol out of a drawer of her desk and before Caxton could shoot she brought it up to point at her own temple. “You give me a reason, any reason at all, and I’ll blow my own brains out,” she said.
42.
You’re bluffing,” Caxton said.
“Am I? There’s one way to find out.” The warden fitted her finger through the trigger guard of her handgun. “I’m dead anyway. Maybe not today. Maybe not for years yet. But I have inoperable cancer. My one big chance was Malvern. She could make me immortal, she said. She promised. All it would cost me was a few of my prisoners’ lives, which was a price I was perfectly willing to pay. But it looks like she lied. It looks like she never intended to make me a vampire. When she wakes up tonight, she’ll probably kill me, and then bring me back as a half-dead. That’s almost worse than going out in a hospital bed with a drip in my arm. So I have no reason not to pull this trigger.”
“You think I care?” Caxton asked, trying to keep her voice from breaking.
“Oh, yes, I do,” the warden said. She cocked the hammer of her pistol. The muzzle hadn’t moved a hairsbreadth from where she had it jammed against her temple. “I know you, Caxton. I know you well enough, anyway. I’ve met enough dirty cops in my time—sometimes they ended up here, as prisoners, and sometimes they were just dropping somebody off. You get so you can tell right away. It’s like they have a certain smell.”
“A stink of corruption?”
The warden laughed, a short, bitter sound. “Ha! No. More like the smell of money. So I know you’re not dirty, because you smell like failure. You’re a good cop. You’re one of the good guys. Or at least that’s what you tell yourself. It explains why your life is such a wreck, doesn’t it? Because good guys always finish last, but it’s okay, because their hearts are pure.” The warden sneered. “You’re in here for kidnapping and torturing some schmuck who had information you needed. I could appreciate that approach—but you can’t. You actually feel bad about what you did. You confessed, and pleaded guilty, and now you’re doing your time like a nice little girl. It’s all bullshit, of course. I’ve had a front-row seat for twenty years now on what human nature really means. I’ve watched nice little girls come in here and turn into bloody savages in a week. Nobody’s clean in this world, but cops like you want so badly to believe it’s possible, you’ll do anything not to break the illusion. You won’t let me shoot myself because it would make you complicit. It would gnaw at you, for the rest of your life, that you let somebody die when you could have saved them.”
“Are you so sure? The man who taught me how to kill vampires—he would have cocked that gun for you. And I memorized everything he had to teach me.”
“I can see it in your eyes, Caxton. You still think you can come out of this without killing a real live human being. You think you can kill Malvern and walk away—go back to some kind of normal life. So no, you won’t let me kill myself. And if you take one step closer to this desk, I will shoot.”
The warden was right.
Caxton couldn’t let her shoot. The warden was right that it would gnaw at her. It would give her nightmares. Even when she did the right thing, when she protected people from harm, she had nightmares of the things she did. If she let this woman kill herself, it would haunt her forever.
She had no choice but to give in.
“So I guess we have a stalemate,” Caxton said. “A… hostage situation.”
“What? What what what?” Gert looked up and stared around the room. “Who has a hostage? What’s going on?”
Caxton sighed. “I’ll explain later.”
“You want me to kill her?” Gert asked, pointing her knife at the warden.
“No. Not right now,” Caxton said.
Gert’s head slumped forward. She was crashing—whatever drugs she’d taken were wearing off. In a minute she would probably fall asleep.
The warden smiled. “Interesting,” she said. “I put you in a cell with Stimson because I expected her to throttle you in your sleep, but instead, you’ve made a friend.”
“I couldn’t have made it this far without her.”
“Hmm. You honestly believe it, don’t you? That everyone deserves a second chance. That there’s a little bit of good in everyone. You must. I watched her kill Wendt, the CO in the SHU. You were right there, you know how that happened. Yet even still—you brought her along. You relied on her. Do you even know why she’s in prison? You might want to ask her some time. It might make you think twice about your choice of partners.”
“She’s done fine so far,” Caxton said, but she sounded halfhearted even to herself. “If I lower my shotgun, will you lower your sidearm?”
“No,” the warden said. “I think not. If you lower your weapon, I’ll shoot you where you stand.”
“Why?” Caxton demanded. “How does that help anyone?”
“It could help me a great deal. Malvern’s obsessed with you. She wants you alive so she can make you her plaything. Oh, she has big plans for Laura Caxton. But if you’re dead when she wakes up in a little while—”
“She’ll kill you. For thwarting her.”
“You really think so?” the warden looked upward as if considering it. “I know she’ll be angry, sure. But she’s too smart to throw away someone she needs, just because they disobeyed her once. And when she’s not fixating on you, she can be a very rational creature.”
Caxton had to admit that was true.
“And then at least I would have a chance of getting what I want—the curse. No, your dying right now would be great for me. I’m thinking about shooting you right now, shotgun in my face or not. I’m wondering if I can kill you before you kill me.”
“I doubt it,” Caxton said.
The warden pursed her lips in thought. “Yes. So do I. So that’s not how we’re going to play it, either.”
“Alright,” Caxton said. “Tell me how it goes.”
“I’m going to walk out of here. You aren’t going to follow me. After that, you can do whatever you want. Go downstairs, get yourself killed. That way I still win.”
“There’s a chance I won’t die down there.”
The warden laughed. “A slim one, I suppose. But say you do live to see the sun go down tonight. What will you do then?”
Caxton shrugged. “I’ll rescue Clara. Then I’ll kill Malvern.”
“You think she’ll make it that simple? A woman who has spent the last three hundred years surviving when
