of positive outcomes. But she would die trying, and that had to count for something.
Hauser padded over toward her, nose rummaging through the air. Her red eyes fixed on a spot of blood a few feet outside of Caxton’s cage.
“I cut myself,” Caxton said, her tone flat and emotionless.
“That was kind of stupid, bitch. It’s not like I’m going to come in there and bandage you up,” Hauser said. But she was still looking at the blood.
“I wonder what it tastes like,” Caxton said. “You know. If we’re going to be vampires. I wonder what it tastes like to you.”
Hauser seemed to recover herself a little. “Yeah. Well, you can lick it off the floor later. I’m supposed to sit at that desk and just watch you guys. Make sure you talk over Malvern’s offer real good.”
“I bet it tastes like—what? Wine? Maybe really good chocolate,” Caxton suggested. She hadn’t expected Hauser to put up this much resistance.
The vampire squatted down and put one white fingertip next to the blood spot. And just stared at it. Didn’t touch it. Didn’t move. When they wanted to, vampires could stand so still you’d think they were marble statues. They didn’t breathe. Their muscles never got stiff or tired.
“You don’t have to do this,” Clara shouted. “You can fight it.”
“Clara, please,” Caxton said, trying not to sound too angry. “Don’t. Not right now.”
“She’ll kill you on the spot,” Clara whispered. “Suck you dry!”
“No I won’t,” Hauser said. “The last one did that, Malvern tore her heart out while we watched. I ain’t stupid, you know? I may not be a genius, but—”
She stopped talking in midsentence as if something had interrupted her train of thought. Then she trailed her finger through the cooling spot of blood. Lifted it carefully to her face and sniffed at it.
Then she licked her fingertip. And her eyelids drifted shut.
For a while there was no sound in the room. No one moved or spoke. Caxton held her breath. Then, when the vampire didn’t open her eyes again, she said, “Look. I got it all over these bars. I kind of made a mess.”
The eyelids snapped open. The red eyes were burning.
For a vampire the first taste of blood was like a junkie’s first fix of heroin. It would never taste as good as that first time. It would never be so clean, and pure, and fulfilling. It took them places, took them to dark new worlds that were theirs to explore. Places human beings couldn’t go.
It made them want more.
Endlessly more.
Hauser attacked the cage with a sudden savagery that had Caxton reeling backward. She felt her bad arm hit the side of the cage and she winced in pain, but her brain wouldn’t let her feel much. It was too busy overloading her body with adrenaline. Getting her ready to run. But there was no place to run. The cage bars bent inward and snapped as Hauser licked and tore at them, tearing the foam rubber to crumbs, smashing through the lock on the cage’s door.
Caxton had been careful to smear as much blood as she could spare on that lock.
The door flew open and Caxton rolled out onto the floor. She grabbed the first thing her hand could find.
The vampire turned and glared at her. Her mouth opened wide and Caxton could see the dozens of nasty fangs in there. A few of them were wet with her blood. There was no intelligence in Hauser’s eyes now. There was nothing to reason with.
No thinking going on at all. Just pure vampire instinct.
The vampire pounced. Caxton braced herself and twisted her head away at the last possible moment. Hauser’s teeth clicked on the floor where her jugular vein had been. The vampire lifted her head up again to howl in frustration—
—and screamed in agony instead.
Caxton had grabbed a broken piece of steel bar, part of her cage before the vampire demolished it. She had held it in front of her like a spike and let momentum do the rest. The bar had been broken off at an angle, giving it a good point. Caxton knew exactly where to place it for maximum effect.
It pierced the vampire’s heart like a needle, and came out through the skin of her back.
The vampire’s body convulsed, demonically strong muscles pounding the floor, thrashing at the air. A blow hit Caxton in the thigh, instantly numbing the flesh there. Another slapped at her face, but they were getting weaker now. Hauser’s jaws flashed open and closed as she tore and rent at death itself, but she couldn’t put it off for long. Little by little the red fire in her eyes went out. The tension in her muscles eased. She died a second and final time, pinning Caxton underneath her corpse.
Using the impaling bar as a lever, Caxton pushed the body off of her. Then she searched the vampire, looking for keys. She found one that had a tiny white label on it reading CDR, which she assumed meant Cooling Down Rooms. That was what the warden had called these cages.
She unlocked Clara’s cage, and, after a moment’s hesitation, Gert’s, too. Her celly crawled out of the cage with a look of sheepish self-hatred on her face. “I was supposed to be useful to you,” she said. “I was supposed to help. I let you down.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Caxton said. “I—”
She didn’t bother finishing the thought. Clara was too busy grabbing her in a desperate embrace. Then she pressed her lips hard against Caxton’s and kissed her, again and again.
54.
Clara filled Laura in on the situation as quickly as she could.
There were two remaining vampires other than Malvern in the prison, and an unknown number of half-deads. The warden was dead, and so were Guilty Jen and her set, which meant there wasn’t a single living person at large in the facility other than herself, Laura, and Gert. Fetlock was supposed to be outside with a small army of SWAT troopers, but so far he hadn’t made his presence known.
There were nine hours left until the twenty-three-hour deadline.
“We’re not going to be here when the deadline comes,” Laura said. “One way or the other. Malvern’s playing a game with us. I don’t want to play anymore.”
“She’s trying to torture you. That whole business with us having to make a unanimous decision—she’s trying to get under your skin,” Clara said, grabbing Laura’s arm. She felt the muscle there, under the sleeve of her jumpsuit. Laura had always been so strong.
“Maybe. That almost seems too simple for Malvern—she likes to be two steps ahead of me, always.” Laura shook her head. “Anyway. I know what we do next. We all get guns.”
“Fuck yes,” Gert crowed, and slapped hands with Laura. Clara wondered what there was between the two of them. She wasn’t jealous, really, just—
There was no time for that sort of thing. The three of them raced down to the Hub, which was deserted except for the corpse of Queenie. With the lights on it was easy to find the armory door. It was a heavy reinforced door with multiple locks, but when Laura pushed on it, it swung open easily on well-oiled hinges.
Too easily. Clara’s heart sagged in her chest even before they got inside and found that the armory had been wrecked. There were piles of guns on the floor—pistols, shotguns, submachine guns, heavier stuff, too, by the dozen, and box after box of ammunition—but the barrel of every single weapon had been bent out of shape. One assault rifle was still clamped in a table vise. The half-deads had been busy.
“No,” Laura said. As if she could change reality by denying it. “No. We worked too hard to get here.” She picked up a riot gun. Its barrel turned ninety degrees from its stock and pointed at the wall. In disgust she threw it hard against the far wall to make an impotent clattering noise when it hit the floor.
“It makes sense, I guess,” Clara said. “The half-deads couldn’t use the guns, and the vampires don’t need
