32 Fangs: Laura Caxton Vampire Series: Book 5

by David Wellington

  “I’ve always been a big booster of science, ahum.”

  “Really?”

  Urie Polder shrugged. “Science makes a certain sense, don’t it? It always works. It’s repeatable. Magic don’t work that way. Anybody who practices magic, they know that frustration that comes when a charm that functioned a thousand times suddenly stops workin’. And you cain’t say why.”

  Caxton grimaced. “I’m kind of counting on your magic, for what’s coming.”

  “More fool you.” But he was smiling.

  “How does magic even work?” she asked.

  “I would dearly like to know. Nobody has any notion, to tell it true.” Polder rubbed at his face with his wooden fingers. “’Tis like a cookbook handed down from mother to son for generations. The recipes inside, you know they worked for somewhat. And you can try ’em yourself, and maybe you get what you wanted. But nobody knows where those recipes came from. Nobody knows why they work. You just gotta trust that they do. And if they don’t work for you, ain’t no recourse.”

  “You seem to make it work pretty reliably.”

  Polder nodded. “Not that it didn’t cost me.” He lifted his wooden shoulder, let it fall again. “There’s them that can do it better than t’others, that’s all. My Patience has got a real gift. Down the Hollow, there’s Heather and Glynnis, they’ve got some real juju. But you add us all up together, we hain’t a pinkie finger’s power between us, compared to the likes of Astarte Arkeley, or my Vesta, God rest her.”

  Caxton nodded in agreement. She’d never met Astarte Arkeley while she was alive, only talked to her on the phone, but from what she’d heard Astarte had been a powerful mystic. She had known Vesta Polder. Vesta had been a good friend to Caxton, even if the witch had scared her shitless. To Jameson Arkeley she’d been more than just a friend, at least when she was alive. Vesta been a great ally against the vampires, and then Jameson had murdered her. He’d been after everyone he ever loved, back when he was human. He’d killed his own wife—and his mistress.

  For the first time, she realized the connection there.

  Jameson hadn’t chosen his wife—or his lover—because they were beautiful or they could cook well or some other normal reason. He’d picked them because they were witches. His brother had supposedly been talented, too, though not even on Urie Polder’s level. And his children had both been initiated into magical circles, born into a tradition. He’d seen to that.

  He had been trying to put together the same trap she was building now. Jameson Arkeley, that old son of a bitch. He’d been way ahead of her. He hadn’t loved the witchbillies, he’d collected them. Made them care about each other, made them bond together as a force that could fight vampires.

  When he became a vampire himself the first thing he’d done was to kill all the people he had brought together. She’d assumed at the time he was just trying to cut ties to his own humanity—that he had gone after his own family because he couldn’t bear to think of what he’d become. But he’d always been smarter than that.

  He had been trying to wipe out a dangerous threat. The witchbilly families—the Polders and the Arkeleys—had been among the few people in the world who could bring him down. So they had to go.

  “They’re afraid of you,” Caxton said. “The vampires are afraid of magic.”

  “I told you nobody knew who wrote that cookbook,” Polder said. “But I know why it was set down. To give us a chance ’gainst ’em, ahum.”

  “Sure. Before there were guns, we needed some way to fight back against the vampires. So that’s why magic was invented in the first place.”

  “The knot’s pulled tighter than that.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Who you think wrote that cookbook, first?”

  She got his meaning immediately. “The spells you use are just like her orisons,” she breathed. “Oh my God.”

  “Every bit o’ magic I got, every charm, every enchantin’. It takes us years to learn, and costs us dear. All so we can do as they do with no effort whatsoever.”

  “Wow. Oh, wow,” Caxton said. “Like Prometheus stealing fire from the gods. Your ancestors stole magic from the vampires.” She thought of something. “Justinia Malvern is a master of the orisons. The other vampires I’ve met, even old Alva Griest, always said she was a hundred times better at the orisons than they were. You don’t stand a chance against Malvern, do you?”

  It was a cruel thing to say, and even Urie Polder—calm, quiet, Zen monk–like Urie Polder—rocked with the sting of her words. His face darkened for a moment as if he might respond with a cruelty of his own.

  But the hex sign on his basement floor worked its magic, and the anger drained from his face.

  “I’ll do my best, you just see if I don’t,” he said with a sad smile.

  “I’m—sorry,” Caxton said, though she had a hard time summoning up the sentiment. “Look, anyway, we have other lines of defense.”

  “Aye.”

  “The cave,” Caxton said, rubbing at the bridge of her nose. “It’s ready. Right? Ready as it’ll ever be. That’s where it’ll end. I have a … a feeling.”

  “You developin’ the gift, now of all times?”

  She shook her head. “Just a hunch.” She had another one, too. “Listen,” she said. “Years ago. The first time I met you—Arkeley brought me to meet you, and you showed me what was in your barn. That night Vesta read the cards for me, and gave me a little charm to protect against the vampires. You remember?”

  “Ahum.”

  “She didn’t do it for free. When she asked to be paid, Arkeley gave you something, a little bag—”

  “Still got it,” Polder said. He rose to his feet and went over to a workbench up against the far wall. There was a ghost skin on the bench, a shimmering, iridescent piece of what might have been—but definitely was not—leather. It was hard to look at. Polder ignored it and reached into a drawer underneath. He fetched the little bag, then emptied its contents into her cupped hands. One after another they fell out of the bag, triangular and white.

  Thirty-two in all. Thirty-two fangs. Jameson Arkeley had personally pulled them out of the jawbone of the vampire Congreve with a pair of pliers. Congreve had been the first vampire Caxton ever met. The first one she’d helped to kill.

  “Back when he brought you these, Vesta said you would find some use for them. But you never did. You just put them away for when we would really need them. You’ve been waiting for this, haven’t you? Just like me?”

  “Yes’um. And I know exactly what to do with ’em. Don’t you worry now, girl. It’ll be ready in time.”

  [ 1772 ]

  Running from a mob of would-be vampire killers, she laughed and leapt from rooftop to rooftop, easily evading their bullets and their swords. It was a pleasing diversion, for once to be the hunted instead of the hunter. Especially because she knew they could never win. She jumped from the top of an inn to sail gracefully across a lane, already anticipating the cat-like landing on the roof of the stable across the street.

  Below her the horses went mad, stamping in their stalls, bucking at their gates, trying to escape, to run free. Perhaps they distracted her with their annoying noises, perhaps she merely misjudged the distance. She had no depth perception, after all.

  Either way—she fell.

  She kept laughing all the way down, as the cobbles rushed up at her. So what if she collided with the earth? Her body would heal itself. Even as her thighbone snapped on impact, she was laughing.

  Inside her leg she felt the bone fragments start to knit back together, to re-form themselves. She leapt back to her feet—

  —and fell again. The leg hadn’t fully healed. She felt new bones snapping. She stopped laughing then.

  She managed to get away that night. But it was a close thing. Her perfect vampire body had betrayed her. She did not want to think about what that meant.

  The next night, when she rose from her coffin, she reached automatically for
her gown. Yet before she could put it on she turned and glanced at the looking glass in the corner. She had not studied her reflection for years. She had no vanity in her. Yet this night, she could not help but look. Like a man scratching at the bite of an insect, she could not help herself.

  Justinia looked in the mirror and saw death there. It was not as pleasant an experience as she’d once believed it would be.

  Where was the girl who had not been afraid?

  She was old now. Her breasts were empty sacks sagging on her chest. The lines on her face were like cracks in a porcelain mask. Her arms, once graceful and strong, had become sticks hung with sagging pennons of white flesh.

  Blood. All she needed was more blood—a few more victims, surely, would be enough to restore her. She should go out and hunt, and sup deep of the life that thronged around her in this city. So many beating hearts out there, so much blood—

  It was never going to be enough.

  She closed her eye and sobbed until rusty tracks of blood rolled down her cheek and splashed on her knees. Once she had been unafraid. She had embraced the cosmic gamble, the inevitability of death, the rest and comfort it would bring. It was what had drawn Vincombe to her. Convinced him she was worthy of this gift.

  He’d been a fool. But so had she.

  She had not feared death, because life had not been sweet. Now, with all the power of her new body, with all her strength, she had something to lose. To never go out by night again, to never stroll beneath the moon, surrounded by the smell of blood, by the veins that throbbed and glowed in the darkness around her—to never again leap and run in the forest, where she was a more fearsome beast than any tiger. To never taste the blood again.

  It was terrifying.

  She opened her eye and looked at herself again. Perhaps, she thought, the ravages of time would so sicken her she would regain her fearlessness. Perhaps she would accept that all the cards had been played and it was time for an end. Then she would tear out her own heart and scream, but only for a moment, and then the overwhelming rush of blackness, of oblivion—

  But in the mirror she saw not blackness, but the perfect creamy white of her own face. And there, in the center of it, her one, red eye.

  One red pip on a field of white.

  The ace of hearts.

  One of the strongest cards in the deck. As long as your hand contained the ace of hearts, no wager was truly lost, she considered. There was always a new trick to play.

  One ace …

  She could go on. She could go on forever. Not as she had been, not as strong. But there was hope, one ace alone was enough for hope. There was a future, a continuation. If she must fear death, that did not mean she could not cheat it.

  Yet she knew, for the first time in her life, that she would not have the strength to beat this game alone. She knew she would need help. After all, if one ace meant hope, how much more advantage it was to have a pair. …

  22.

  When Glauer came out of Fetlock’s office he was white as a sheet. Clara was sitting in one of the uncomfortable chairs outside the door, waiting her turn. She shot Glauer a meaningful glance. He caught her eye for a moment, then just looked away.

  “Specialist Hsu? He’s ready for you now.”

  Clara looked up suddenly, as if she couldn’t remember where she was. Fetlock’s assistant—they didn’t call them secretaries anymore—gave her a sympathetic smile. Clara tried to return it with a cocky grin. She knew she failed. Then she got up, smoothed out her skirt, and walked into the lion’s den.

  Fetlock’s office was not so much decorated as enshrined. It was not big, but he kept it uncluttered—just a desk, with a laptop computer and a single telephone. Two chairs. One whole wall of the room, however, was taken up with a massive glass-fronted display case. The inside was lined with flocked red wallpaper. A very old, very moldy leather duster hung inside, as well as a mangy cowboy hat and a leather holster. Relics of some ancient cowboy out west, one of the first U.S. Marshals. Fetlock loved to tell people stories about the old days, when the Marshals were pretty much the only law enforcement west of the Mississippi.

  Clara had never been able to figure it out. If there was any American citizen living in the twenty-first century who had less cowboy in him than Marshal Fetlock, she had yet to meet him.

  He sat behind the desk looking like he was there to conduct an employee review. Like a dismal little bureaucrat. Maybe a tax lawyer. He had his hands steepled in front of his face and on the desk before him lay Clara’s permanent dossier.

  “You were hurt again,” he said.

  She took the chair in front of the desk and sat down, trying not to sigh.

  “Hurt in the line of duty. Most cops accept that’s going to happen from time to time. They expect commendations for it. Of course—you aren’t actually a cop.”

  Clara frowned but said nothing.

  “You’re a forensic specialist. Not like Quincy, mind you. Not like CSI Miami. Like in the real world. Where you’re supposed to examine crime scenes, then take evidence back to the lab for analysis. The most dangerous thing you’re supposed to do is handle blood evidence.”

  She couldn’t help herself. “In a vampire case, there’s rarely any blood evidence to work with. You need to get in there, in the middle of things, while the evidence still exists, and—”

  She stopped because he had lowered his hands to the surface of the desk. He didn’t ask her to shut up. He didn’t need to.

  He scared her in a way vampires didn’t. In a dull, ugly little way.

  “Laceration to the hip. Contusions to the chest and face. You crashed your own car to stop a suspect from getting away. Even real cops—and I mean field agents, active-duty people—don’t get those kind of injuries very often. This is the second time in a week for you. Hsu—may I call you Clara?”

  He waited, as if he actually cared what she said in response.

  You can call me Specialist Hsu, you pencil-necked desk drone, she wanted to say. Instead, because this was her job, this was where her paycheck came from, she said, “Sure.”

  “Clara. I’m worried about you. Honestly, humanly, compassionately worried for your safety. I wonder if you’re trying to get hurt.”

  She couldn’t help herself. She laughed.

  He waited until she was done.

  “I’ve seen it before. Adrenaline junkies are common enough in any field of law enforcement. Here in the Marshals Service, it’s a real occupational hazard.” He nodded toward his display case. “We forget we’re not all Wyatt Earp. We get addicted to the thrill of the chase, the real, honest, down-in-the-dirt work. Taking out bad guys. So we put ourselves in more and more desperate situations. We forget to call for backup. We discharge our weapons far more often than the policies and guidelines suggest.”

  “Sir, honestly, I—”

  “It happens to the best of us,” he said, with a sad little sigh. “Look at Caxton. It happened to her and now … look at her. Look at what has become of her.”

  “Sir. With all due respect, last night we uncovered some real evidence of a continued—a renewed—vampire presence in Pennsylvania. We—”

  He might as well not have heard her. “There’s only one cure, sadly. Removal from active duty. Putting the afflicted on desk jobs where they can’t hurt themselves.”

  Christ, no. Not now. “Sir—”

  “Of course, we can’t do that in your case.”

  “Oh.”

  She sat back in her chair. Watched him smile at her for a while.

  “No. Since, technically, you’re already assigned to a desk job. At least, a lab job. There’s not really a lot I can do to make your job less dangerous. I doubt you have the necessary clerical skills for actual paper-pushing.”

  “No,” she admitted. “I’ve never done that kind of work.”

  “So I can’t reassign you,” Fetlock said. He raised his hands in the air, then let them settle on the desk again.

  Relief washed through Clara like a
cold shower. She closed her eyes and just said thank you for a while. Not to anyone in particular. Just—thank you.

  Prematurely, as it turned out.

  “No. My only option at this point is to fire you.”

  She sat up so fast her knees collided painfully with his desk.

  “As of now you are no longer an employee in the USMS,” he told her. “I’ll need you to turn in your ID and any Service equipment or materials you have in your possession. I’ll give you until the end of the day to get your files in order for your replacement. I don’t need to tell you—well, actually, I’m legally required to tell you—that you’ll be observed at all times until you leave your lab for good, and that any office supplies we find on your person after the close of work today will be considered stolen property. There’s the question of your pension and your severance package, which I’ll be happy to go over with you, if you like, and—”

  “You son of a bitch! Malvern is alive!”

  He looked at her expectantly.

  “We fought half-deads last night. She’s not just alive, she’s active. She’s here now, killing people. Maybe she wants to finish Laura off before she goes underground, or maybe she just intends to start her rampage all over again. People are going to die, lots of people are going to die, and—and—”

  “I know,” he said when she’d sputtered to a stop.

  “What?”

  “I know what you found, and I agree. It’s proof positive that Malvern is alive and active. I’m putting a team together right now to handle it.”

  “But—you—” For the last two years Fetlock had maintained in public and private that Malvern had died in the prison riot. That vampires were extinct. It had become sort of a private joke between Clara and Glauer—that Fetlock wouldn’t believe Malvern was still alive until she’d actually torn his head off and sucked the blood out of his stump, and that even then he would ask her for identification.