The man kicked them away, their jaws snapping at the air around his feet. In their weakened condition they could do nothing to stop him. One man prevailing against a half-dozen vampires—it was a disgrace. How low they had all fallen! The man sprayed fuel across the boat’s hold, a rank stink that offended Justinia’s newly recovered sense of smell. And then he brought fire down on them all, and he left them. His work was done.
The others screamed inside her head.
blood!
without blood we cannot—
—must have his—
I burn! I burn!
get his blood, bring it to me!
They scrabbled over each other, burning hands reaching for each other, reaching for hope, for help that could not come. The flames exploded through the cramped space as they desperately tried to crawl back to their coffins, to some illusion of safety.
Justinia worked her orison, the one Vincombe had taught her. She alone seemed to have the presence of mind to protect herself, to act rationally.
To, perhaps, survive.
The closest coffin was not her own. It belonged to a withered old bat of a vampire, a creature of the Enlightenment so vain he had forced Lares to put a wig on his withered head, even when there was no one to see it. Justinia dragged herself across the floor with one skeletal arm to reach it. Over a score of years in Lares’ care she’d regained some tiny shred of strength. It would have to be enough.
She felt bony fingers clutch at her ankle from behind. She spared enough energy to glance back and see another of Lares’ charges—one who claimed to have seen Rome fall, if one could credit such a thing—pulling her back toward the flames.
Get blood for me, he thought at her. I need blood.
Get your own, ye pagan thing, she sent back, and kicked him away. She pulled herself into the coffin even as flames licked its sides, even as the ancient decayed flesh of the vampire behind her crackled and spat.
Then she pulled the lid tightly closed on top of her, and squeezed her eye shut, and desperately hoped it had been enough.
The flames roared—and then, quite suddenly, were replaced with a terrible hiss, as if a giant snake had swallowed her coffin whole. She felt the floor give way beneath her, felt water press in on every side as the boat collapsed and sank. Icy cold water jetted in around the edges of the coffin lid, but she could do nothing about that, could only hold the lid with her last remaining ounce of strength, hold it shut as she sank into lightless depths.
It was all she could do. It would have to be enough.
One by one she felt the others dying. She felt their minds wink out like terrible dreams on waking, felt them scream their last. And still she sank. The sun was coming up in the world above. It was almost dawn. She would not be able to hold on longer when the sun came. The water would rush in, and mayhaps it would scatter her bones. This could be the last trick she ever played, the last spill of cards across the green baize. It could be the end.
It could be. It could be her death.
For three hundred years, almost, she’d waited for this. She’d looked forward to it sometimes. Sometimes she had fought it tooth and nail. She clutched to the lid, because she could do nothing else. And then—
The sun came up, even if she could not see it, and her mind went away as it did every morning, washed away by the light.
She would never know what happened in that day. How they found her, or how they dragged her bones up from the bottom of the river. The next night she woke to the sound of machines pumping and bleating all around her. To cool air and scratchy starched sheets underneath her. She woke to see men all around her. To see their blood pumping through their bodies. Pumping fast. They were afraid of her.
She wanted to smile but lacked the strength.
A face loomed over her. A face she knew, though she’d seen it only once before. The face of the half-drowned man who had killed Lares.
“My name is Jameson Arkeley,” he told her. “The court says I’m not allowed to kill you. That you can’t be linked to any crime, so you can’t be executed. The court specifically did not say that I have to be nice to you. It didn’t say I couldn’t torture you for information. It didn’t say I couldn’t make your life a living hell.”
Ask what ye’d know, and I’ll speak, Justinia told him. Though there’ll be a price. She was more than willing to trade all her secrets for another drop of blood.
He didn’t seem to hear her.
“I don’t care who you are or what you used to be,” he went on. “A lot of good men died, and you didn’t. I hate that. From now on, bitch, you’re mine.”
His bluster failed to scare her. Because she had seen something in his eyes—a darkness she knew well. A darkness all her men had shared.
Am I? she wondered. Am I yours, darling Jameson? Am I to be your lover, then?
Perhaps—perhaps not. But as she looked at the men around her, at the doctors and the policemen who’d come to look on her, she knew. She knew with a certainty—one of them would serve. It seemed that fate had time for one last hand, one more deal of the cards.
45.
Clara spun around, looking for threats—and found none. All of the half-deads in the vicinity were down, their bones still twitching, their screams having turned into plaintive moans. One by one they fell silent.
“Uh—thanks,” Clara said. “What the hell was that?”
“Goofer dust,” Urie Polder said. “Grave dirt and rattlesnake skin, mostly.” As if that explained everything. “This here’s Heather’s trailer. Lucky she had some on hand. Wish I had a bit more.”
“Yeah,” Clara said, and turned again to scan the darkness. She couldn’t see much, but there were definitely more half-deads out there, moving through the shadows. Except she realized not all of those shadows were enemies.
Some of them were witchbillies. Clearly they’d decided the cops couldn’t protect them, and had taken matters into their own hands. Clara could just make out Heather, her hands lifted in complicated gestures that made half-deads explode as she walked past them. She could see a woman in a bonnet holding a slender wooden wand. When she pointed it at a half-dead the creature went rigid and immobile, forced to stand upright in perfect posture with its hands at its sides. That gave a man with a fringe of beard time to blow its head off with a shotgun.
Other witchbillies were searching through the bodies strewn about the clearing, helping the few surviving windbreaker cops to their feet—or doing what they could in the way of first aid for those unable to stand.
It was over. The battle was over—so abruptly her body couldn’t seem to believe it. Her arms kept twitching, reaching for her gun. The cops were routed, and there had been terrible casualties. But it was over. No more half-deads came screaming out of the woods. No more suicide bombers. No more tittering maniacs falling out of trees.
The witchbillies had carried the day. At least for the moment.
“I’m glad you’re on our side,” Clara said.
“Half-deads are unnatural sorts of bein’s,” Urie Polder told her. “Our art’s well effective against that type of thing. More so than ’gainst your police friends. And none of us is a match for Malvern, ahum.”
“Maybe she won’t come now. Now that we beat her troops,” Clara pointed out. Even as she said it she knew it was just wishful thinking.
“She’s already on her way,” Polder replied with a sad sigh. “I can feel it.”
“You can?”
“I ain’t got the second sight, like Patience. But I feel her all the same. The thing that killed my wife … I’d know her anywhere.”
Clara could only stare at him in terror.
Polder closed his eyes and nodded. “She’s passed the teleplasm cordon, ahum. Didn’t so much as slow her stride. We got may-haps ten minutes ’fore she’s here. Best get ready.”
Clara bit her lower lip and tried not to think about what was coming. She looked Urie Polder up and down and saw as if for the first time the short stump that wa
s all that remained of his wooden arm. “You’re hurt,” she said.
“Seemed the best way out of them handcuffs, ahum,” he told her.
“Jesus, you just—you snapped off your own arm to get free?”
“Hurt a mite. Patience is still inside, still bound. You want to help me out by getting her loose?” Polder asked.
Clara nodded dumbly. She rushed inside and found the teenaged girl still handcuffed to the trailer’s small table. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll get you out of here.”
“I’m not worried,” Patience said. She looked scared all the same. “I know how I’m going to die, Ms. Hsu. I know exactly when it will happen.”
Clara studied the handcuffs as a puzzle she needed to solve. She didn’t have a key for the cuffs, so she looked at the table leg they were attached to. It was made of aluminum, and not very thick. She kicked at it a couple of times and it dented, then buckled in the middle. Heaving and straining, she managed to break it away from the table. She pulled the cuff free and Patience stood up, rubbing at her wrist.
“Wait,” Clara said. “You’ve seen what happens here? You know how this is going to end?”
“I do.”
“Do I—I mean—how many of us make it out of—”
“Knowing that wouldn’t help you,” Patience said, calmly. “It would only make you apprehensive. You would constantly be worrying about the terrible things yet to come.”
“Christ. But just tell me if Caxton … if she …”
“No,” Patience said, with a determined shake of her head. “No, I won’t tell you. Now, come along. They need you outside.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Clara growled. Then she stalked out of the trailer, back into the darkness.
Glauer was waiting for her there. He had a new bandage around his elbow, and somewhere he’d found a new weapon, a SWAT carbine. He tossed it to her, and she saw he had another one on a strap over his shoulder.
“No shortage on these now,” he said. He peered out across the clearing at the road that led out of the Hollow. “I took a quick look over there. Not something I want to do again. The SWATs are gone.”
“I can’t believe they just ran away,” Clara said.
Glauer shook his head. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Oh.”
“We have maybe four men—policemen, that is—who can still fight. The witchbillies took some hits themselves, but they’re in considerably better shape. I’m going to assume there are more half-deads hiding in the trees, but it looks like they’re too scared to attack. Not unless Malvern shows up and orders them directly.”
“Urie Polder says she’s on her way.”
Glauer nodded as if he’d expected nothing less.
“What about Fetlock?”
“Sealed up tight in his mobile command center. He didn’t answer when I banged on the side and called his name, but I could hear him moving around in there.”
“That son of a bitch,” Clara said.
“Just doing what he does best. Protecting his own ass,” Glauer told her. “Caxton’s still locked inside the paddy wagon. I say our first priority is to get her out of there. Then we load everybody into the other vehicles and make a break for it.”
“The road might be trapped. There could be another army of half-deads waiting for us out that way.”
“It’s still the best chance we’ve got.”
Something occurred to Clara. She tried to ignore it, but she couldn’t. “What about Simon?” she asked. “He’s still here somewhere.”
His face went marginally more pale. “I forgot about him.”
“He’s probably still up at the house on the ridge,” Clara pointed out. “Do we go up and get him?”
Glauer stared at her with his teeth clenched. They had to think about this. They were the good guys. They had to make a decision. And if they made the logical decision, the right decision …
“Maybe he’s safer where he is,” Clara suggested. “If we waste time going to get him—”
“Malvern might show up. And I don’t actually want to fight Malvern tonight.” Glauer turned his face to the side. She thought he might spit, but he didn’t. He couldn’t like this at all. “Okay,” he said.
“Okay?”
“Okay, we don’t leave without him. We can’t—not after what Malvern has already done to him and his family. But neither you nor I can be spared to go find him. My arm barely works and I’ve lost some blood. How’s that cut on your shoulder? Why haven’t you bandaged it yet?”
Clara frowned, then went over to the nearest police car. She bent over to get a look in its side mirror and saw a nasty cut running from the back of her neck across her shoulder. “Oh, come on,” she said. She touched it and her finger came away wet with blood. “I didn’t even feel that.” The adrenaline must have numbed her to the pain. “I don’t even remember which one of those bastards gave it to me.”
“About three inches to one side and he would have cut your throat open,” Glauer told her. He tore a piece from his ragged shirt and pressed it against her wound. “Hold that there. Keep pressure on it. We don’t have time to bandage it properly—it’ll have to wait until we get out of here.”
“Sure,” she said, shaking her head again. Then she checked herself over for additional wounds. There was a superficial cut on her left calf—her pant leg there hung in tatters—but it had already stopped bleeding. “This—was really close,” she said.
“Let’s not let it get any closer than we have to,” Glauer told her. He ran off toward the surviving cops and the witchbillies. “I’ll get one of the witchbillies to fetch Simon. You find the key to the paddy wagon,” he called back to her over his shoulder.
46.
Easier said than done, of course.
Fetlock might have it. Or Darnell. Clara was certain it wouldn’t just be lying around waiting for her to scoop it up.
It occurred to her that maybe they didn’t need the key. They could just leave Caxton where she was and drive the paddy wagon away with her in it. She ran over to the paddy wagon and pulled open its driver’s-side door. Climbing up into the seat, she looked for the ignition and found the keys were missing. Cursing, she reached under the dashboard, trying to remember how to hot-wire a vehicle. Of course it couldn’t be that easy. The fuses and wiring were hidden behind a thick metal panel that had its own lock, to prevent exactly what she had in mind. Of course, the key to that lock was missing, too.
“You stupid fucker,” she said.
Then she shrieked, because someone banged on the wall behind her, the wall that separated the paddy wagon’s cabin from the prisoner area in the back.
“Clara?” Caxton called. “I thought I heard your voice.”
“It’s me.” She tried to think of how to explain what was happening. Caxton had missed the whole thing, would have only heard the noise of the explosions and the gunfire. And the screams. “They came in force, but we drove them off,” she shouted. “Malvern’s on her way. I’m going to get you out of here.”
“Leave me.”
That, of course, would be the sensible thing to do. The utterly logical, coldly calculated choice. Just like it made sense to leave Simon behind, too. “Fuck that,” Clara said, and jumped out of the paddy wagon. She had to find that stupid key.
She hurried toward the road, counting the vehicles she passed. None of them looked like they’d been damaged in the fighting, though a few were sprayed with blood and dirt from the explosions.
In the road she saw what Glauer had meant about the SWAT troopers. They were in pieces. It was difficult to even look at what remained of the bodies. The half-deads must have swarmed over them like a wave of undead flesh. The SWATs had given the half-deads a good fight—there were half-dead bodies everywhere, severed limbs still twitching, eyes still rolling in crushed skulls—but the cops were dead to a man. Their armor had been peeled off of them and some attempt had been made to sort it into neat piles, but mostly the half-deads had focused on kill
ing them and making sure they were definitively dead.
If Darnell was in that mess, he might have the key she needed. She walked over to the side of the road and vomited for a while, then came back and started her search. The first order of business was to find a flashlight so she could actually see what she was looking at. Not that the prospect appealed to her all that much.
She found a SWAT carbine that had a flashlight attachment and switched it on. A cone of red light speared out into the darkness, lighting up a bunch of tree trunks. The eerie light made them look like they were dripping with blood, which was somehow worse than the real blood all over the road. Clara shivered a little, then turned back to the bodies, her light ghosting over the ground, picking out every piece of gravel, making every shadow knife-sharp.
Then something glinted in her light—a pair of eyes. She fought down her fear, thinking she’d just lit up the face of a corpse that had died too quickly to close its eyes. But then the eyes moved and she jumped. Her finger twitched on the carbine’s trigger and she sprayed three rounds into the trees.
She saw it moving still, and realized that fear had ruined her aim. The half-dead was still, for lack of a better term, alive. She braced herself for its imminent attack, knowing it would come at her with a knife or a club or just a rock. Instead it tried to run away. It clutched an odd collection of body armor to its chest—some leg protectors, a pair of helmets, and it dodged in a classic serpentine pattern as she tried to follow it with the carbine. She squeezed off another burst, knowing she wasn’t aiming properly, that there was almost no chance of hitting the damn thing.
Then a rifle cracked, very close by. The noise was enough to make her soul jump out of her skin. She dropped instantly to the ground, thinking that someone was shooting at her.
That, it turned out, was incorrect. It was Darnell who’d taken the shot—and he’d aimed at the fleeing half-dead. Darnell had been lying in the road, stretched out to look like just another corpse. Waiting for this.
32 Fangs: Laura Caxton Vampire Series: Book 5 Page 24