He had no eyebrows to raise, but his eyes opened wider, not in surprise, but in expectation. He wanted to see what she would do next.
When he was alive he had watched her like that all the time. Studying her. Testing her. It had always pissed her off. Now it scared her witless.
She didn’t waste a breath thinking. She just acted, grabbing her pepper spray can off her belt. She had no idea if it would cause a vampire the slightest discomfort, but she whipped her arm forward and pressed her thumb down hard on the trigger button.
Before the spray could emerge from the can his two hands cupped around her right hand and squeezed, crushing her fingers against the metal can, squeezing her own bones against each other.
The pressurized can ruptured in her hand, exploding in a sudden cloud of pepper spray. She squeezed her eyes shut and threw her head to the side to avoid getting a face full of the irritant. The pain in her hand was astonishing—her head filled with light and her stomach instantly flipped gears, vomit flashing up from her stomach to touch the back of her throat. If she threw up in the breathing mask she knew she would choke and suffocate and die. Somehow she mastered the pain and choked her bile back down.
When she opened her eyes again she was kneeling on the stone floor, her head down, her arms draped before her across the rock as useless as two fronds of seaweed. Her right hand was an agony of blood and broken skin. Jagged shards of metal—all that was left of the can—stuck out of her palm like petals of an alien and cruel flower.
Jameson crouched behind her. The fingers of his good hand gently pushed away the hair on the back of her neck. He bent low and she felt his teeth touch the sensitive skin there. It was an absurdly sexual feeling—how many millions of times had Clara kissed her there, breathed softly on her spine?
She had no more time, certainly no more time for idle thoughts, but she thought of Astarte accusing her of sleeping with Jameson, of the two of them having an affair. Was that something Jameson had wanted? A desire he’d never spoken of?
Was that why he had let her live for so long?
This wasn’t a lover’s caress, though. This was a killing blow, a gentle coup de grâce. He was about to sink his teeth into her neck and tear out her brainstem.
She did the only thing she could think of, which was the stupidest thing she could think of. She whirled around under him and shoved her broken hand in his face. Maybe she’d thought the broken bits of can would cut him, but more likely her subconscious knew that even the most self-conscious, most in-control vampire cannot resist the smell of fresh human blood.
Jameson tried to jump back, perhaps sensing that she wasn’t beaten yet. He got far enough away from her that she could scuttle backward on all fours like a crab, so that she could push her back against the wall and get halfway up to a standing posture.
It hurt her to do it. It made her cry to do it, but she closed her right hand in a fist until blood welled up out of her wounds. Then she flicked her hand at him until dark drops of blood splashed across his face.
His head reeled back as if the blood drops had been bullets. His mouth yawned open, revealing all of his sharp teeth, while his eyes looked like they might burst from their sockets. He roared in need, in pure bloodlust, and his body craned upward, his arms flying wide, his fingers curling like talons. Whatever had been left of Jameson Arkeley in that brain, in that heart, was drowned utterly in the river of blood that roared through his soul.
He had taught her, a very long time ago, that while many different people became vampires, once they tasted blood there was only one of them. One being, one personality. Everything that makes a human being special and unique—the personality, the compassion, the passions, and the hates—are lost and only the pure, bottomless need of the vampire remains.
In that instant he stopped being her mentor or her partner or even her reluctant friend. He stopped being the hero who had killed so many killers, he stopped being the ex-cop who couldn’t let go of his case, he stopped being a father or a brother or a husband. He had tasted her blood and now she meant nothing to him, nothing but food, but sustenance. This was how he’d been able to kill his brother and his wife and Cady Rourke and Violet and all the others, so many others. He wasn’t a person anymore. He was a predator.
And in that moment, he lost. Jameson Arkeley had been a brilliant strategist and a cunning investigator. Now he was just a beast, a ravenous, bloodthirsty monster. He looked down at her, and she knew he would grab her up in a moment and tear her to pieces.
She was almost ready for him. She had her pistol cradled between her two nonfunctional hands. She had no more bullets, but she had the flashlight attachment, and she flicked it on.
His eyes had been adapted to the total gloom of the coal mine. They were extremely sensitive to light even at the best of times. He roared and threw an arm across his eyes, but the flashlight was just an annoyance to him—it couldn’t really hurt him. He blinked a few times and then looked back at her, better adapted now to handle the light.
With her right thumb, though it cost her pain, she turned a dial on the flashlight attachment, then flicked another switch. The red dot of the laser sight jumped across the black fabric of his vest. She had turned it up to its full intensity, to a power level where it could cut through fog or smoke and light up a target hundreds of yards away.
She brought the gun up and raked the laser across his eyes like a knife.
He howled and screamed and tore at his eye sockets with his claws. His eyes bubbled and smoked and white jelly ran down his cheeks.
It was far more than she’d hoped for. Even at full strength the laser would have barely dazzled a human’s eyes—at most it might have temporarily blinded a human being and left bright afterimages swirling in his vision.
Vampires, however, were creatures of the night, cursed never to see the bright strong light of the sun as long as they lived. Their eyes were not meant for that kind of abuse.
Jameson swung out with his left arm and his fingerless hand knocked the gun right out of her weak grip. That was fine—it had served its purpose. Caxton got up on her feet and wobbled into the middle of the gallery, facing him as he clawed the air looking for her.
She wasn’t sure if he could still see her blood or not. He could have seen it in total darkness, and she thought maybe he didn’t need eyes to see the blood surging through her veins. To help him find his way, she threw her right hand toward him again and let her blood splatter on the ground, forming a trail of droplets he could certainly smell.
Then she turned and ran up the gallery, the way she’d come, moving as fast as she could.
He came after her, of course. He wanted nothing now but to drink her blood. His son was forgotten, the goal of recruiting new vampires was forgotten, everything but the blood was gone. He came sniffing after it, his hands out in front of him, his eyes already healing in his skull, white smoke writhing in his eye sockets, taking on the shape of new eyeballs to see her with.
They didn’t have far to go. She danced backward until she felt the sawhorse smack the back of her thighs, and then she looked over her shoulder and saw the fissure gaping open behind her. The fissure that led straight down into the mine fire that burned at a thousand degrees Fahrenheit.
“Come and get me,” Caxton grunted.
The vampire complied. He ran at her as fast as a charging horse. She dashed aside at the last moment, and he went flying, shattering the sawhorse into fragments as he passed right through it. One second he was running past her and the next he was gone.
She staggered to the edge of the fissure. It would hurt to look down there, but she had to know. Sparks fluttered against her face, caught and smoldered in her hair as she stared down into the crack.
He was hanging by the fingers of his good hand to the side of the fissure, his bare feet dangling over the burning coal. His fingerless left hand slapped at the wall impotently, unable to get a grip. How far down was it—thirty feet? A hundred? She couldn’t tell. His red eyes
stared up at her and in them she saw naked desire. Not for her soul, but for her blood. He wanted her blood so badly that he couldn’t think anymore, couldn’t realize what he was doing. He reached for her, forgetting his other hand couldn’t hold him—
—and then he fell, straight downward, into the coal fire. He did not scream. When he hit the flames they parted to swallow him like the waters of a river of fire, and then he disappeared from view.
It was hot enough down there to burn him to cinders in moments, she knew. Hot enough to burn even the tough muscle of his heart. He was dead. Jameson was dead, she thought, but no—he hadn’t been Jameson at the end. She hadn’t killed Jameson. She’d just killed one more vampire.
It was over.
60.
Nothing was over.
She followed the passage back by the reflected light of the fissure, as far as it would take her. Then she got down on her hands and knees and crawled around in the dust until she found her gun. She tried turning on the flashlight, but the lens had cracked when Jameson batted it out of her hands.
Jameson—whose grave would remain forever empty.
Caxton let herself cry for a while. Then she started to actually think about how she would get back to the lighted corridor. It wasn’t going to be easy, she thought. She couldn’t remember how many turns the gallery went through. She couldn’t remember if there were side passages she might accidentally enter and got lost within. She started to really worry. Her oxygen supply was low. If she couldn’t find the lighted corridor before it ran out, if she just wandered until she couldn’t breathe, until she had to lie down and go to sleep—
Her feet must have remembered the way. Before she knew it she was back at the central junction chamber, where Simon still lay chained to a timber. Where Raleigh’s body lay where it had fallen. Where four coffins waited for her inspection.
First things first.
Caxton took off her mask and tried not to breathe too much smoke. She touched the mask to Simon’s face and let him breathe in the oxygen until he started to stir, until his eyelids fluttered weakly open.
It wasn’t easy, with two bad hands, but she freed him from his chains. She let him have the oxygen—he’d been breathing the smoke a lot longer than she had. He sank to the floor, not even strong enough to thank her.
It didn’t matter. She had important things to do. First she checked Raleigh’s corpse. The girl was dead, twice dead, finally dead. Caxton’s final bullet must have torn open her heart, her only vulnerable spot. Her body was cold and motionless. It still felt wrong and unnatural when Caxton touched her skin. At least there would be something for her family to bury. Not that she had any family anymore, except for her brother.
One more thing. Caxton went to the wall where the four coffins lay. Three of them were shut. She threw them open, bending low to see what they contained.
They were all empty.
“Not again,” Caxton sobbed.
There had been a fifth half-dead. The one she had sprayed. It must have come back here, to protect its masters. Its mistress.
Justinia Malvern had spoken to Caxton on the phone. She had been regaining strength for the last two months, healing her body of the ravages of centuries. Jameson had been feeding her stolen blood.
Had she been strong enough to walk under her own power yet? Or maybe the half-dead had just picked her up and carried her away. It didn’t matter. Either way they could easily have escaped the mine while she was busy fighting Jameson.
Malvern was gone. She had escaped yet again. She had a real talent for it.
Caxton’s job wasn’t done.
As weak as she was, as injured, she smashed the coffin to splinters with a rusted old shovel, hurling curses at it until spit flecked her chin.
When she was done she turned around and saw Simon watching her. The light in his eyes was dim and his face was streaked with coal dust, but he managed to sit up a little. “Are you…okay?” he croaked out.
“Not yet,” she told him.
She managed to get him standing, and even to shuffle along a little as long as she supported him with her numb shoulder. Together they made the long and painful trek back to the bootleg mine and the only exit to the surface. Caxton had plenty of time to consider that Malvern must have come that same way, with the same slow hesitating walk, borne up by her half-dead servant just the way she was supporting Simon.
At the end of the corridor she pushed the trapdoor open and helped Simon crawl up, out into the cold, fresh air. Then she scrambled up herself and rolled on her back to just lie on the grass and stare up at the stars. She let Simon fall down beside her and for a while they both just breathed in clean air and let their bodies rest.
It couldn’t last, of course. There was a squeaking sound, the sound of shoes crunching through gravel and weeds. Her eyes had fluttered shut and she had almost fallen asleep, but as a pair of well-polished dress shoes came up even with her face she managed to bolt upright, her mangled hands reaching for weapons that weren’t there.
It wasn’t a vampire or a half-dead or a cop-hating resident of Centralia who had come for her, however.
It was Fetlock.
“I saved Simon. Jameson’s dead,” she told him. “So is Raleigh. Malvern got away, but if you give me back my star I can find her, I will find her—”
Fetlock shook his head. He managed to look a little sad, a little more compassionate than she had expected. He was still a Fed, though, and she knew what he’d come for.
Slowly, carefully, she raised her hands in surrender.
“I know what you did to Carboy. Ms. Caxton, I have no choice but to place you under arrest,” he said, very softly. “You have the right to remain silent,” he told her, as he reached for the handcuffs at his belt. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law…”
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Carrie Thornton, Jay Sones, and so many others at Three Rivers Press who helped make this book possible.
My wife, Elisabeth, as always, showed me unwavering support during the writing process and deserves a lot more gratitude than I can express here.
About the Author
DAVID WELLINGTON is the author of Monster Island, Monster Nation, Monster Planet, 13 Bullets, and 99 Coffins. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1971, he currently lives in Manhattan with his wife, Elisabeth, and his dog, Mary.
Also by David Wellington
There Are Only 13 Bullets Between the World You Know and the World They Rule
All the official reports say they are dead—extinct since the late ’80s, when a Fed named Arkeley nailed the last vampire in a fight that nearly killed him. But the evidence proves otherwise…
13 BULLETS
$13.95 paper (Canada: $17.95)
978-0-307-38143-9
A Dark Secret Buried Beneath Our Bloodiest Battlefield
Laura Caxton vowed never to face them again. The horror of what the vampires did is too close, the wounds too fresh. But when Jameson Arkeley, broken and barely recognizable, comes to her with an unfathomable, unholy discovery, her resolve crumbles…
99 COFFINS
$13.95 paper (Canada: $16.95)
978-0-307-38171-2
Available from Three Rivers Press wherever books are sold. www.crownpublishing.com
ALSO BY DAVID WELLINGTON
Monster Island
Monster Nation
Monster Planet
13 Bullets
99 Coffins
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2008 by David Wellington
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
Three Rivers Press and the Tugboat design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wellington, David.
Vampire zero: a gruesome vampire tale / David Wellington.—1st ed.
1. Caxton, Laura (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Policewomen—Fiction. 3. Vampires—Fiction. 4. Pennsylvania—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3623.E468V36 2008
813'.6—dc22 2008027388
eISBN: 978-0-307-45019-7
v3.0
Vampire Zero: A Gruesome Vampire Tale Page 31