happened around vampires it didn’t pay to ignore them. She sniffed around and found the smell was coming from one of the kiosks. It was a smell almost like roasted pork, though more sickly sweet. Like someone had been burning the hair off of a pig, perhaps.
“Smells like my daddy’s barbecue,” Gert whispered when Caxton asked if she smelled it too. “He had a half an oil drum full of coals, big enough to roast a horse if he wanted to, he always said. He used to do a whole suckling pig for Fourth of July.”
Caxton hadn’t eaten in a long time. She was pretty sure that what she found in the kiosk would not be a pig roast.
Except—in a way, it was. In a very sick, very darkly humorous way.
“I think that’s the warden,” Caxton said, when she popped open the door of the kiosk. Inside, lying on the floor, was a charred human corpse. “The clothes look right.”
Clara’s voice came very softly over the intercom. “That’s the warden!” she said.
“Yeah.” They had known already that Malvern had killed the warden. Now they knew how. The vampires must have doused her in gasoline and set her on fire. “I don’t get it. That’s not Malvern’s style. Sometimes vampires like to torture their victims— they get off on it—but she was never that kind. I think this is a message, except I don’t know how to read it, you know?”
Gert’s open face suggested she didn’t know. “You been after Malvern a long time, huh?”
“You could say that.” It had only been a couple of years, really. But in that time Malvern had cost Caxton a girlfriend, a mentor, half the police force of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and, least of all, her career.
“You really want her dead.”
“Oh, yes.” Caxton wanted nothing more in the entire world. She would let Fetlock take the other two. She didn’t know them, had no history with them. But Malvern had to die now. Once it was done, Caxton would be finished with vampires. She could go back to being a model prisoner, do her bit, and then restart her life.
Or she could die in the next thirty seconds.
She was pretty much okay with either scenario, as long as she got one shot in.
There was nothing they could do for the warden, even if they wanted to. They left her body where it lay and moved to the far end of the corridor, where another barred gate was all that stood between them and C Dorm. “The plan’s pretty simple. We rush in there. You distract the half-deads, however you can. I get as close as possible to Malvern and I shoot.”
“And then what?”
“Then we play it by ear. You ready?”
Gert nodded. Caxton looked up at the video camera in the ceiling.
“She’s close to the far end of the dorm,” Clara whispered. “There are three half-deads between you and her. It’s just a straight run and she doesn’t look like she has any idea that something is up.” The intercom crackled for a second—Clara had left it turned on, though she wasn’t saying anything. Finally she came back and said, “Laura. Good luck.”
“Thanks,” Caxton said, even if Clara couldn’t hear her. Then she pointed at the gate and held up three fingers. Two fingers. One.
The gate popped open with an electronic buzz.
They stepped through. Every light in the dorm was on, and Caxton had no trouble seeing the rows of cells, the medical carts in the walkway, the half-deads drawing blood from the arms that prisoners shoved through the bars. Dead ahead, not fifty yards away Malvern had her back turned. She was wearing her decrepit mauve nightgown, and the skin on her head and bare shoulders was perfect, creamy, unblemished.
Caxton’s vision narrowed down to a spot just left of Malvern’s spine, just below the wing shape of her shoulder blade. Right where her heart would be. She was running so fast, she didn’t even feel her feet moving beneath her.
You didn’t aim a shotgun, she told herself. You pointed it. You didn’t squeeze the trigger. You yanked it. You could do all that with just one hand.
Caxton had closed half the distance, Gert right by her side, when the intercom blared again. Clara wasn’t whispering this time.
“Laura, look out! They were hiding on the upper level the whole time!”
Caxton stumbled to a stop. Malvern turned around to look at her with a wicked grin full of nasty teeth. Caxton turned around and looked up at the galleries above her, to the second tier of cells. From either side, a female vampire dropped down, landing effortlessly like a pair of cats.
As if they had all the time in the world, they started walking toward her, their red eyes locked on her face.
56.
Have ye made your choice, then?” Malvern asked. “And were ye three unanimous in the choosing?”
Caxton brought the shotgun up to shoulder level. She swiveled from side to side, pointing the weapon at one of the new vampires, then the other. She thought of how she’d tricked Hauser, but she didn’t have the time or the imagination to come up with something like that again. Anyway, she knew Malvern. Malvern would have stuck the stupidest of her brand-new brood with guard duty. These two would be smarter than Hauser.
They were getting closer. They clearly enjoyed the anticipation, the moment before the kill. One of them, the one in a stab-proof vest and panties, was licking her lips. The other, dressed in a jumpsuit with the sleeves torn off, kept wiggling her fingers in the air as if trying out a new set of claws for the first time. Vampire fingernails looked just like their human counterparts (if paler), but they could tear through sheet metal without breaking. They had no trouble at all taking apart a human body.
“Forbin, please secure Miss Caxton,” Malvern said. As scared as she was, Caxton thought that was odd. Always before Malvern had referred to her by her first name. What game was the old bat playing? “I think we can forgo the niceties now. She’s turned me down, and more’s the pity. We could have made history together, dear.”
Forbin was the one with the torn sleeves. The other one didn’t have to be told to go for Gert. Maybe, Caxton thought, she could give Gert a chance to run away. Not that she could outrun a vampire, but—
Forbin lunged for Caxton, trying to grab her shoulders, but she telegraphed the move and Caxton just ducked under her arms. She spun around on her heel and stuck the muzzle of her shotgun right into the other vampire’s stab-proof vest. Without any hesitation she fired her one and only shell.
It was too bad, then, that Forbin was even faster than Caxton had reckoned. Forbin recovered from her failed lunge and brought her elbow backward, into the small of Caxton’s back, throwing her across the room—and ruining her aim.
The shotgun went off with a roar and the hand-loaded shot tore through the vampire’s body, but well to the left of her heart. The vest caught fire and for a second the vampire’s arm swung free at her shoulder, barely connected to her torso. She looked down at it with a grimace and lifted a finger to touch the edge of the gaping wound.
On the floor Caxton rolled over onto her back, her broken arm flopping painfully at her side. “Gert, get out of here!” she screamed.
Gert didn’t need much encouragement. She was already running for the door behind her. The wounded vampire didn’t try to stop her. She was too fascinated by the wound in her chest. It was healing rapidly, white smoke filling in the hole, new skin flowing over the exposed muscles and bones. When it was done she lifted her arm and made a fist, perhaps checking to see if the arm still worked.
Only then, after all that, did she begin to chase Gert. She got to the door before Caxton’s celly was halfway there. Gert stopped running. Started to back up.
