20.
Before I could enter said house, a shot called out, and buried itself between my feet. I stood stock-still, as if paralyzed, and thought my number must be up. The shootist who waved at me from a nearby tree, however, proved to be no Johnny Reb. Instead he was dressed in dark green with black rubber buttons. His weapon lay draped over a thick limb of the tree & it appeared to me as a mechanical python almost. It was a custom-made target rifle, a weapon I’d seen only once at a beef shoot before the commencement of hostilities. It looked like a good length of octagonal pipe with a batwing stock & a spyglass mounted on the top for good measure. I knew that rifle could have punched a hole right through me, especially at such proximity, & I also knew its master had been aiming to warn & not wound me. His strange uniform was meant to help him blend into the foliage, & I recognized it as the habiliments of the U.S. Sharpshooters. He was a Unionist, then, & good thing or I would have already been dead. He had a fringe of hair around the sides of his face & skin the color of walnut shells. What he was doing up in that tree I did not hazard to guess.
“My friend is in there!” I called back to him, but my voice faltered as he shushed me.
With his free hand he beckoned me closer to his position, then made me lie down in the tall grass there. “Rebs comin’,” he hissed. Despite my furor I was still a soldier & I still understood what that meant. I made myself as discreet as possible.
—THE STATEMENT OF ALVA GRIEST
21.
Caxton lay back in her hospital bed and stared at the ceiling, unable to get comfortable. She’d been found at dawn crawling around in the military park. The park rangers had at first thought she was blasted on drugs, and had rushed her to Gettysburg’s very modern hospital. The doctors had tested her and found no drugs at all in her system, but they still wanted her to rest. Fat chance. “I thought it was the vampire. Oh, God—I nearly killed Clara because I thought she was the vampire!”
“Yes.” Vesta Polder placed her hands on Caxton’s cheeks. The older woman wore dozens of plain gold rings on her fingers and the metal was cool and welcome against Laura’s burning skin. She left her hands there while she studied Laura’s eyes. “That’s true. But there’s no need to be so dramatic about it.”
Laura licked her dry lips. She felt feverish and drained, like she was coming down from a bad case of the flu. “I could have killed her!”
Vesta Polder shrugged and took her hands away. “You didn’t, though, and life is far too short for us to worry about the evil we might have done.” The older woman had waves of frizzy blond hair that stuck nearly straight out from her head. She wore a long black dress buttoned tightly at the throat. She was a friend of Arkeley’s—though perhaps it was better to call her an ally—and she was some kind of witch or medium or something. Caxton had never been quite clear on where Vesta’s powers came from, but they were considerable. It had been Arkeley’s idea to bring Vesta Polder in to the hospital, a strangely caring gesture on his part. She didn’t choose to look a gift horse in the mouth by wondering about his true motivations. “Do you need a sedative, or do you think you can settle down, now?”
Caxton swallowed. Her throat was thick and scratchy, as if she’d been shouting for hours. “I’ll try,” she promised. She felt like she’d been scolded by an elementary schoolteacher. “Is she okay, though?”
“She’ll be fine. I gave her some tea to soothe her hurt.” Vesta Polder caught Caxton’s look of alarm and shook her head. “Just plain old herbal tea. Much more effective than any potion for what ails her. She’s frightened, of course, but I’ve already explained things to her and she isn’t angry with you. This one,” she said, looking down her sharp nose, “is worth keeping. She’s smart enough and she’s grounded in reality.”
Caxton nodded. A lot of people wouldn’t have described Clara that way, but Vesta saw people the way they truly were, not how they presented themselves. “Am I okay?” she asked.
Vesta Polder straightened up until she loomed over the hospital bed. “You could use a long rest. You should get away from this town, get as far away as possible. I can’t say I like this place myself. Too many vibrations, good and bad. The ether here is sorely clouded. I’ll be heading home now to where I can think properly. You should do the same.” She reached into a pocket of her dress and drew something out. She opened her hand and the spiral pendant tumbled out, dangling on its torn ribbon. “The police found this near where they picked you up. Try to hold on to it better from now on, hmm?”
Caxton promised. She took the amulet gladly and held it tight in her hand. It felt cool like Vesta Polder’s rings, and even more reassuring. The older woman patted her arm and left. As soon as the door of Caxton’s room was open her next visitor entered. Clara sat down heavily in a chair next to the bed and smiled broadly at Caxton without saying a word. She had some red bruises on her throat that Caxton couldn’t stand to look at.
“You scared me, you!” Clara said. “Stop doing that! When I got the call that they’d picked you up I was sure that the vampire’d gotten you. They told me it got that other guy, the local cop.” Clara wore a black T-shirt and jeans—she must have taken the day off. “His family must be so upset right now but I just feel relieved. Does that make me a terrible person? Don’t answer that. I’m just glad you’re alive.”
Caxton opened her mouth to speak, but only a raw creaking sound came out.
Clara’s eyes widened. She shook her head. “Listen, the dogs are fine. I watered and fed them just like you showed me. Fifi doesn’t like me, I think, but that’s just got to mean she doesn’t know me yet, right? Everybody likes me once they get to know me.”
Laura closed her mouth and nodded against her pillow.
“The doctors say you can go home whenever you’re ready. I put a new quilt on our bed—it was really cold last night, especially when I was all alone—and I saw a place on my way down here selling Macoun apples. Those are my favorite! I thought I’d make you a pie. Would you like that? I’ve never made one before, but…but…”
Clara was staring at her face. Something wet dribbled across the side of Caxton’s mouth. She reached up and found that she was weeping copiously. She tried to apologize, but a wordless sob came out instead.
“Oh, Laura,” Clara said, softly. She climbed out of her chair and into the bed, shoving Laura to the side. “It’s okay. I’m here.” She pressed her small body against Caxton’s side, her chest. Her perfect soft mouth touched Caxton’s greasy forehead.
She was rocking back and forth slowly, her arms wrapped around Caxton’s limp body, when the door opened again.
“Ahem,” Arkeley said.
Caxton didn’t move. Clara sat up just enough to tell him to go away.
The old crippled Fed didn’t obey her. Instead he came farther into the room to stand at the foot of the bed.
“Get out!” Clara said, louder this time. There was bad blood between her and Arkeley—she’d even threatened to hit him, once, though she’d backed down when she realized it would have cost her her job just to punch a U.S. Marshal.
Caxton closed her eyes. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t want to see Arkeley. At the very least, though, she owed him an apology. She swallowed heavily and shifted herself upright in the bed.
“My girlfriend and I,” Clara said, “are kind of busy at the moment.”
Arkeley’s face contorted gruesomely, his scars bunching up and turning white. His eyes were shining. Was he smiling? It looked like it hurt him to do so. “Officer Hsu, why don’t you go wait out in the hall?” he asked.
“Why don’t you sit and spin?” Clara asked, throwing him the finger.
His smile didn’t shift.
Caxton cleared her throat noisily. The two of them looked at her as if waiting for her to settle the differences between them. She didn’t think she could do that, but at least she could try to take charge of the situation.
“You were right and I was wrong,” she said, finally, looking into Arkeley’s eyes.
They didn’t change; he hadn’t come to gloat. “There was, in fact, a vampire in that last coffin. An active one.”
“Yes. I’ve read the report filed by the survivor of last night’s attack.” He looked her up and down as if searching her for wounds. “The other survivor. His prose style was a little too emotional for proper police work, but I got the gist.”
“How are you going to proceed?” she asked.
“Who? Me?” Arkeley’s face went wide with surprise. It again made all his scars turn white. “I can’t fight this vampire.”
“Why not?”
The old man grimaced and looked away from her. “Are you really going to make me say it? I’m a cripple.” His shoulders tensed. How much did it hurt him to admit his weakness, she wondered? How much had it humiliated him when he’d asked her to tie his tie for him? “My body doesn’t work well enough anymore. I can advise you. That’s all. This case is yours.”
Caxton’s mouth opened as if she were about to laugh. But she knew he was quite serious. “I can’t,” she tried.
“If you don’t,” he said, slowly, deliberately, “someone else will have to take your place. Most likely a local cop who has never dealt with a worse villain than a drunk driver. You know exactly what will happen to said cop. He’ll die. He won’t know what he’s up against, he will underestimate the vampire, and he’ll be ripped to shreds the first time he draws down on this monster.”
Caxton thought of a hundred arguments against what Arkeley was saying. There was only one problem with them: He was right. She’d had horrible, perfect proof of that the night before. Arkeley was right—this was going to be her case.
22.
He proved as good an oracle of future events as he was a crack shot. Within moments of my concealing myself I began to hear hoofbeats approach. Within the space of a minute a horde of Secesh cavalry reined in before the house. Their leader, an officer of some distinction by the look of his insignia, wore leather gauntlets & a dusty slouch hat & good gray cotton tailored to his frame. Many of his men were in butternut though, which is to say, uniforms made at home & undyed. We’d seen plenty like them at Chancellorsville, where some men fought with no shoes on their feet, & some without even rifles of their own.
We were defeated at Chancellorsville, as we have been defeated every time we strove against Robbie Lee. I took this fact to heart & tried not to breathe too loudly. “Marse Obediah,” the cavalry commander shouted, as if he were hallooing an old friend. “Can you hear me in there? I’ve come from Richmond thirty miles. Can you hear me? The Cause requires your services once more. The Yanks are all over this part of creation & we must drive them back. General Lee commands it!”
The officer wheeled his horse as if expecting an attack to come from any direction.
An answer came at last, however, in a voice that chilled my blood. There was very little human in that voice though the words were good English. It sounded more like a violin had been scraped with the neck of a broken bottle, & words had somehow come out.
“You have been heard,” the voice announced.
—THE STATEMENT OF ALVA GRIEST
23.
Caxton got out of the bed feeling like she’d been beaten up the night before. Her joints ached and there was a truly foul taste in her mouth. It couldn’t be helped. Clara had brought her a change of clothes, which she got into painfully. It felt good to have a crisp new shirt on her back, though. She slipped on her coat and shoved her notebook and her cell phone in the pockets. The local police had been kind enough to return the latter after she dropped it in the street outside the mortuary.
“You’re on the case,” Arkeley said. It wasn’t a question.
It had been, the day before, and the answer had been no. Now everything had changed. She had watched a fellow cop die because of a moment’s hesitation. She had gone chasing after a vampire she had no chance of killing. It had all been so crystal clear. It had all made sense—the way nothing much had since the last time. Since the last vampire she’d fought.
“Yes,” she said. Clara turned to look up at her, but Caxton didn’t even meet her lover’s eyes. What choice did she have? Arkeley couldn’t fight active vampires anymore. Not when he couldn’t tie his own tie. There were plenty of other cops in the world, but none of them had her experience. In fact, none of them had any experience with vampires. If she left this job to other cops, they would almost certainly get themselves killed.
Of course there was no guarantee Caxton would survive, either. But that was part of who she was. Her father had been the only cop in a coal mining patch up north. His father had been a Pinkerton. What would her father say now, she wondered, if he were still alive? She knew exactly what he would say. He would tell her it was about damn time.
“I’ve made a lot of mistakes already,” she said, and Arkeley just nodded. He’d never been big on reassurance. Still, the fact that he’d come to her for help—that he thought of her as the one best to find and destroy the vampire—meant something. She just hoped she could convince her superiors in Harrisburg. “We should start doing things right, then. We should start now.”
He nodded again.
“That starts with getting some idea of what we’re fighting. Vampires don’t age well—that’s been a constant so far. The older they get the more blood they need just to maintain, and after fifty or sixty years they can’t even climb out of their coffins. This guy’s different. I wish we knew how that was even possible. I saw him last night. He looked like he’d been starved of blood for a very long time. He looked terrible. Still, he almost outran a car.”
“There’s a lot we don’t know about this one,” Arkeley concurred. “I might be able to do something about that.”
Caxton grunted in encouragement.
“It might be nothing. But I have a lead of sorts. I have a contact at the College of Physicians in Philadelphia—”
Clara laughed. “You mean at the Mütter Museum? Why am I not surprised an old fossil like you has an in with that place?”
Caxton frowned. She knew about the Mütter Museum, of course. She’d been there on a class trip when she was a kid. It was the world’s largest collection of medical anomalies. Two-headed babies in jars, the skeleton of the world’s tallest man. Lots of skeletons, actually. She thought about the bones in the cave. The vampires that hadn’t made it to the twenty-first century. “Hold on, Clara. Arkeley, what do they have there that would interest us?”
He shrugged, looking a little miffed at being interrupted. “As I was saying, my contact there got in touch with me recently. He’d turned up something in a storage room he knew I would want to see. They have the bones of a vampire in their collection. Bones which are dated to 1863.”
Caxton’s eyes went wide. “You think there’s a connection.”
“You don’t?” he asked. “I should go and take a look, anyway. It might tell us something about who we’re fighting.”
Caxton nodded eagerly. She was less concerned by who the vampire might be than by what he might do next, however. “Okay. Find out what you can. The most important thing for me right now is to catch the active one. I’ll head up to HQ and see what I can do about getting some people down here so we can start searching for this vampire’s lair.”
He left without another word. Caxton checked her pocket and found her car keys. Turning to Clara, she said, “You drove down here, right? You can take me back to where I left the Mazda and then—”
“Yeah,” Clara said, standing up. She threw her arms around Caxton, pressed her face into the crook of Caxton’s neck. “Anything I can do to help,” she said. “Just promise me you won’t get killed.”
Caxton hugged her back, hard, and promised. When she let go she saw the red bruises on Clara’s neck, however, and made a promise to herself.
The last time she fought vampires people had been hurt—people she cared about. That wasn’t going to happen again.
They went out into the hospital’s parking lot, where a stiff wind was wh
irling up great spirals of fallen orange leaves. Clara drove her back to the Mazda and left her there with one deep, meaningful kiss. She promised she would take care of the dogs.
“Don’t expect me home tonight.” Caxton didn’t plan on coming home until the vampire was destroyed.
“Keep me informed,” Clara insisted. Then she drove away.
Caxton watched the patrol cruiser go, watched the sweep of leaves it kicked up in its wake. Then she unlocked the Mazda and reached inside for the Beretta and its magazine, checked the action, and put the weapon in her coat pocket. Just having her familiar sidearm on her person made her feel better.
She wanted to get started right away, wanted to start liaising with the local cops and start an investigation folder. It wasn’t that easy, though. First she had to drive back to Harrisburg and beg her superiors at the Bureau of Criminal Investigation to allow her to be reassigned and to give her some kind of jurisdiction for Gettysburg.
A thick layer of clouds lay over Route 15 as she hurried northward. She listened to the radio and tried not to think about much until she saw the aqueduct bridges of the state capital appear before her between two ridges. The dome of the capitol looked greenish under the overcast sky, but she was glad to see it. A few miles farther on, she pulled into the parking lot of the state police headquarters, a brick building with a big flag out front. She parked the Mazda and rushed inside to the lobby.
She had planned on speaking with her captain, but when she arrived she was told to go straight up to the Commissioner’s office. At his door she introduced herself to his assistant. She expected to be kept waiting while her superior finished whatever he might be working on at that moment, but instead she was just waved in.
“Trooper Caxton,” the Commissioner said, standing up from behind his desk. His office walls were lined with the antlers of twelve-point bucks, and there were antique rifles lined up behind his desk as if he wanted to be ready to shoot anyone who came through his door with bad news.
99 Coffins: A Historical Vampire Tale Page 7