[ 2006 ]
After Jameson’s death, Justinia haunted the woods of Pennsylvania, hunting only as much as she dared. She could walk under her own power now. She could take her own victims. That in itself was a glorious thing after so long, after so many decades of being constrained to her own coffin. Of being a dead thing that would not sleep.
It was not enough.
She couldn’t take as much blood as she wanted. Every death left evidence behind. Every killing was an arrow pointed directly at her heart. There were others now, other hunters. Inept, incompetent—this Fetlock, for instance, this government man, was so poor at his work that it was child’s play to avoid his attention. The others, Hsu and Glauer, were more problematic. Laura had trained them and they knew all the tricks. They would eventually find her, if she was careless.
Justinia Malvern knew exactly what she should do next. She should flee, head for places where they’d never heard of her. Where no one knew her secrets.
Yes, that would have been the wise thing to do.
But she didn’t go west. She stayed very close indeed.
She lingered in Pennsylvania, taking only exactly as much blood as she needed to subsist. All her old associates and protectors were dead, but their phantoms came to advise her all the same.
“Thou needst to find new purpose,” Vincombe warned her. “Ye’re forgetting what thou art. A killer, not a player of games.”
She ignored his voice as it spoke to her every night. As her depredations took her back, again and again, to the same place. To a stand of woods overlooking a certain fence. A certain zone patrolled by dogs and lit up by searchlights that hurt her eyes.
“There’s easier blood to be had in more pleasing climes,” Easling counseled. Easling, who had lived for comfort.
She waved him away as she watched armed guards stand watch on a high wall. Like men-at-arms guarding a castle, standing in defense of the princess locked away inside a strong tower.
“You can find others who’ll love you, as we did. And was that not a worthy thing? Did it not please you, even a bit?” the Chess boys asked.
She snarled at them and they vanished like the ghosts they were.
“You’re the last of us,” Lares insisted. He looked so sad when she saw him in her mind’s eye. “You have to keep yourself safe, or we’ll be lost forever.”
He was too insubstantial to demand much of her attention. Justinia focused instead on the gates of the prison. On looking for a way in. For one of her talents it should not be too hard, she thought.
“She’ll kill you,” Jameson said.
That and nothing more. And maybe he was right.
She should leave. If she couldn’t do that, she should go and lie low. Let time be her weapon, as it had been with Jameson when he was human. Let the girl grow old inside those prison walls. Let her grow bent and scarred and withered, until she could no longer fight. Until she was no longer a threat.
But no. Justinia wouldn’t do that. As much as she longed to live forever, as much as she wanted to bathe in blood, there was one thing she could not do, and that was let Laura Caxton get away.
They had not yet finished their game.
54.
Clara had to stop arguing with Caxton because she suddenly couldn’t breathe.
It was just a spell. She kept reminding herself of that fact. What she saw, what she felt, everything her body was telling her was wrong.
Her body refused to listen. Her breath raced in and out of her lungs. Her back started to sweat, as she felt the stone around her closing in. Ahead of her the tunnel, barely illuminated by Caxton’s light, narrowed down to be no more than a foot wide, and less than that from floor to ceiling. There was no way she could fit her shoulders through that passage. She didn’t even want to imagine trying.
When she turned her head to look back, though, she nearly screamed. Behind her there was no passage at all, just a blank wall of rock.
Clara bit her lip and tried to master herself. She had come that way. She knew for a fact the passage back there was open and led to the round bubble room. This was just an illusion, just a trick … repeating that to herself, over and over, seemed to help a little.
“Come on,” Caxton said. “The worst bit’s just ahead. We’re almost there.”
Then Caxton scuttled forward on her belly, shoving herself forward with her hands and feet, right through the impossibly narrow part of the tunnel. It looked absurd. It looked like Caxton shrank as Clara watched, her body diminishing as she moved forward with the light. When Caxton pushed through the narrow space she looked like she was no more than half her original size.
It’s just a trick, Clara repeated. This is Urie Polder’s spell, and I’m not stuck. I’m not wedged in here under an entire mountain of rock. The ceiling is not going to cave in. I’m not going to get snagged on a spar of limestone and be caught here until I die of dehydration. I am not going to freak out, I am not going to—
Caxton’s light disappeared around a corner, leaving Clara in total darkness.
Clara did scream a little then. But she shoved one hand over her mouth and refused to make much more noise than a field mouse caught in a rat trap.
The light came back after a second. An enormous hand reached through the narrow tunnel ahead, a giant white hand with fingers as thick as Clara’s arms. It grabbed at her and hauled her forward, toward the foot-wide aperture, and Clara was certain she would be yanked through, her bones broken until she fit. She threw her arms out to brace herself and felt the rock all around her, and that was even worse than just seeing it. She could feel how solid it was, how massive and unforgiving and—and then—
And then she was through. She didn’t even scrape her skin on the stone as she was hauled through the aperture. She saw that it was Caxton’s hand, Caxton’s perfectly normal-sized hand, that had grabbed and pulled her, and she squeezed her eyes shut until she stopped wanting to panic and die on the spot.
The tunnel opened up into a massive cavern, far bigger than anything Clara expected to find under the ridge. It looked like the entire ridge was hollow inside, most of the space taken up by this incredible chamber. Stalactites hung down overhead, hundreds of feet long, as narrow at their tips as ice picks. A broad, rushing river wound through the floor, between outcroppings of stone that looked like cathedrals or candles on a birthday cake or grinning devils with sharp pitchforks. Clara stared down into the water of the underground river and saw it had to be thirty feet deep. The current moved past at an incredible pace—Clara was certain if she set foot in that water she would be carried away, washed down into the bowels of the earth, sucked down forever into measureless caves and smashed endlessly against submerged rocks until she was nothing but blood and paste.
Then she saw the fish and she jumped back in all-new terror. They were gigantic, as big as sharks, and white as vampires. Backward-pointing tentacles fringed their mouths, but that wasn’t the most terrifying thing about them. They had no eyes at all. Their faces were nothing more than enormous grinning jaws, their teeth as wicked and sharp as Malvern’s had ever been.
If she fell in that water, Clara wondered whether the current or the fish would kill her first. It would be a close race.
“Just jump over this little creek,” Caxton said, waving her flashlight across the surface of the water so it glared like a silver mirror struck by a lighthouse’s actinic beam. “We’re headed over there, to the left. There’s a natural chamber there where we’re going to set up our ambush.”
“But—we have to cross the water?” Clara asked.
Caxton stared at her. “You can just step over it here. You don’t even need to jump.” She pointed at a place where the river bent around a massive stand of stalagmites, roaring and foaming as it turned. The water seethed and snapped like a living thing.
Clara shook her head. “How wide is it?” she asked. It looked like it had to be twenty feet to the other side. At least twenty feet. “I know what I’m seeing right now. How w
ide is it really?”
Caxton groaned in displeasure. “Right there? About a foot and a half.”
“And those fish? How big are they, actually?”
“Those tiny little things?” Caxton asked. She laughed and stabbed her light toward them. They didn’t respond at all, but Clara could see them even better in the light and they didn’t look like fish anymore. They looked like prehistoric monsters, the kind of sea creatures that would jump up and drag antelopes down to their doom. “Your average goldfish could take one of those in a fight. I don’t have time for this, Clara. It’s not real. You know that.”
“I know it. I also know what I’m looking at right now.”
“Screw it. You come with me now, or I leave you behind. With no light. I don’t have time to baby you. If you get killed down here, it’s because you had to go racing after me when I specifically told you I didn’t want you here.”
Clara gritted her teeth. She wanted to tell Caxton to go fuck herself.
It wasn’t really the time for that, though.
Caxton jumped over the river then. She seemed to hang in the air for long seconds as she arced over the water, one foot stretched out to reach the far shore. It looked like she would make the jump easily.
Then a cold wind blew through Clara’s head, and she doubled over in pain. She heard a voice like a bullhorn sounding off right inside her brain.
Laura, the voice said, I am not well pleased by your hospitality.
Caxton stumbled in midair and landed with one foot in the river. The white eyeless fish swarmed around her ankle as if they would devour her whole. She casually pulled her foot out of the water and shook it off to dry it.
“Damn,” Caxton said.
“I assume you heard that,” Clara said, shouting across the river to be heard over the roaring current.
“What, Malvern? Yeah. I heard her. And I know what that means. She’s already dug herself out. We have zero time left. Come now, or stay there and die. I don’t care which.” Caxton turned away from the river with her flashlight, leaving the massive cavern in near-total darkness.
Clara closed her eyes and jumped. Every muscle in her body tensed as she hurtled over the massive river, then refused to relax when she landed on the far side—completely clear of the water. She had to force herself to stand up straight. When she opened her eyes and looked behind her, she saw the river had been no more than a thin trickle, less than six inches deep.
She did not ask Caxton to wait for her, but followed close on her heels.
[ 2006 ]
Much of the prison was on fire. The inmates raged and rioted in the courtyard, while outside the police hammered at the gates with a battering ram. It had never looked more like a medieval castle under siege.
Up on the wall, Justinia watched her double fighting with Laura Caxton and wished it could be her.
Oh, such a foolish desire, she knew. The whole point of this scheme had been to have Caxton kill the doppelgänger. The warden of the prison—a particularly vile little human—had been made to look just like Justinia, or at least enough to pass a quick inspection. Justinia had torn the woman’s eye out with her own fingers. Dressed her in the mauve nightgown that Justinia had worn for so many years. Told her that her only chance to live through the night was to defeat Laura Caxton in single combat.
She would be no match for Caxton, of course. And once the warden was dead, Fetlock and his cronies would believe that Justinia had been defeated. They would give up their crusade against her.
But not Caxton. No. Caxton would know better. Caxton would see through the deception. And then she would be faced with a dilemma. She would have the perfect—the only—opportunity to escape the prison in that moment. She would have the perfect motive to do so, as she would be the only human left who would believe Justinia was still alive. Her only other option would be to return to her little cell like a good girl and finish out her sentence.
If she did so, Justinia had decided, she would leave Caxton alone forever. She would flee to the west and lie low for a hundred or a thousand years, and wait for a new nemesis to show him-or herself.
But if Caxton followed Justinia over the wall, well. Then the game would be back on. The cards would all be shuffled, and a new hand dealt.
Justinia knew she should make her own escape with all due speed. The plan would be foiled if anyone saw her up on the wall. But she could not help herself—she wanted to watch for just a little longer. To see Caxton prevail. To know what choice Caxton made, to extend the chase, or to give up.
Come, Laura, she thought. Do not disappoint me now.
55.
“It’ll only take her a few minutes to find this place,” Caxton said. “Even with Urie Polder’s spell in place, she’ll make good time. We need to be ready.”
She led Clara into the killing chamber, her light playing along its walls. Beside her Clara’s body stiffened and Caxton felt her shiver. The spell didn’t extend to this part of the cave. Maybe she was just feeling its effects wear off.
Or maybe she saw what Caxton had seen the first time she’d entered this cavern. It was impressive, she had to admit. Beautiful, maybe, if you could still feel that kind of thing.
The cave system ended here, in an enormous natural geode, twenty feet across. A bubble in the rock, lined all over its inside walls with purple and blue crystals that glittered in the light. They hung down from the ceiling in a thousand massive dripping stalactites, and made the floor uneven except where they had been meticulously cleared away.
Maybe to Clara it was like climbing inside a massive sapphire. Maybe it was like finding a treasure cave with no guardian genie. Maybe it was just dazzling, literally dazzling, to watch the light fracture and spread, beaming all over the small space, reflecting and refracting in a prismatic spray. Maybe it was like something out of a fairy tale to Clara.
To Caxton it was the perfect trap.
Uneven footing. Only one entrance. Plenty of natural cover. Justinia Malvern would have no choice but to come roaring through the narrow gap in the wall, the single access point from the long creek cavern. Caxton had already figured out the best place to stand when that happened. The best place from which to take her shot. Maybe the only shot she would get.
“Go over there,” Caxton said, pointing to a spot out of the way. “Hide, if you can. Stay out of my way. You can handle that, can’t you?”
Clara frowned at her. “I’ve got a gun. I can provide covering fire.”
Caxton shook her head. “You’ve seen how well that works. She wouldn’t even be distracted by the bullets in your carbine. No. She’s all mine.”
“Of course she is,” Clara said.
Caxton closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose. She suddenly felt very, very tired. The last two years were catching up with her all at once. All those nights with little sleep, all those days spent working so hard.
“The plan,” she said, sighing deeply, “was for me to be here, alone with her, at the end. That was how it was supposed to happen. The two of us sealed in here. Forever.”
Clara’s eyes grew bright in the broken light. “Forever? But what about after you kill her? How are you supposed to get out again?”
Caxton shrugged.
“I … see,” Clara said. “You aren’t. You never intended to leave here.”
Caxton was too tired to explain. She let Clara work it out for herself.
“You still have the curse in you. From the time Reyes … from when he put it in your head,” Clara said. “He wanted to turn you into a vampire. He put the curse in you, but that wasn’t enough. You had to kill yourself. That’s the only way a vampire can rise. You had to commit suicide, and he did his best to drive you to that, but it didn’t work. But the curse doesn’t wear off, does it?”
“No.”
“So if you die here, if you kill yourself, you’ll come back as a vampire.” Clara put a hand over her mouth. Then she shook her head. “But if Malvern kills you in here, that’s not
suicide,” Clara pointed out.
“Are you sure? The vampire’s victims don’t just kill themselves because they’re depressed, Clara. The curse drives them to it. It makes them think death would be wonderful, an amazing release. Or maybe they know what’s waiting for them on the other side and they can’t wait for it to happen. It’s not the act of slicing your wrists or taking too many pills that seals the deal. It’s the desire to die.”
“And you want to die?”
“I … don’t know,” Caxton said. “Sometimes. Sometimes it feels like it would be okay. Like going to sleep.” She shook her head. “I’ve known would-be vampires who attacked armed cops just so the cops would shoot them. Does that count as suicide? What about going up against an invulnerable vampire? That sounds pretty suicidal to me. I don’t know, Clara. I don’t know what will happen when I die. But I figured I should be alone, buried in a tomb like this when it happens.”
“No,” Clara said. “No. No, you didn’t just come here to die. No. I refuse to believe that. You’re not just going to let her kill you.”
“Jameson Arkeley did it. He accepted the curse so he could fight other vampires. It worked pretty well, too. Until he tasted blood. Then he became one of them. If I take the curse now and I become a vampire, stuck down here with Malvern, I can destroy her. I’ll have the strength to do it. And because there wasn’t supposed to be any source of blood down here, I wouldn’t fall into the same trap as Arkeley.”
“Except now … I’m here. A, um, a source of blood.”
Caxton nodded. She was too tired to deny it.
“Wow. I fucked up everything for you.”
“Maybe,” Caxton said. It was the kindest thing she could think to say. The most compassion she could spare for the woman who was now fated to die along with her, deep beneath the earth. “Maybe. There’s one chance.” She opened her nylon bag and took out her weapon. The one Urie Polder had readied for her.
32 Fangs: Laura Caxton Vampire Series: Book 5 Page 30