The College of Physicians of Philadelphia was mostly a meeting place for doctors and researchers, with lecture halls and conference rooms taking up most of its space. In the basement, however, there was a suite of rooms used for preparing specimens for the museum. It looked remarkably similar to the facilities in the Civil War Era Studies department at Gettysburg College, though the equipment was much older and less shiny. They laid out Geistdoerfer on an autopsy table there. Caxton folded his arms across his chest to try to give him some dignity, then wondered what to do next. They would need an ambulance or a hearse to take him to a funeral home. She would have to try to locate his family to let them know where they could pick him up. Then she would also have to convince them to cremate him.
First, though, she needed to start coordinating with the Philadelphia police, let them know there was a vampire loose in their streets. Her cell phone didn’t get any reception in the basement, so she left Harold in charge of watching the body while she went upstairs. Halfway there she ran into Arkeley coming down.
“He got away,” she said.
“Of course he did.” The scars that crisscrossed Arkeley’s face didn’t constrain him from throwing her a look of utter contempt. If anything, they made his sneer look worse. “You couldn’t wait ten more seconds?”
She tried to ignore him. “I need to call the loc-c-cal c-, the c-, the authorities,” she gargled, holding up her phone. She tried to push past him, but he stopped her.
“Don’t bother. I contacted them when I got your text message. I had already warned them something like this might happen.”
Of course he had. Arkeley had always been ready for bad things to happen. It was how he lived his life.
It was his most basic philosophy. She let her shoulders sag and put her phone away.
“They’ll have units all over this part of town by now. Cops flashing their lights down every alley and back lot, helicopters up and scanning the rooftops. Of course it won’t come to anything.”
No, she supposed it wouldn’t. Vampires were smarter and faster than garden-variety criminals. They knew instinctively how to blend into the shadows, how to use the night to their advantage. The regular police had little chance of finding him.
Caxton glanced at her watch. It wasn’t even midnight. This late in the year the vampire would have plenty of darkness to work with, maybe seven more hours. How far could he get in that time? Or perhaps he would stay nearby, find a good hiding place where he could sleep through the day. Then he could come back the next night to try to rescue Malvern again.
“You damned fool. I expect you to screw things up from time to time. But it looks like even I underestimated your ability to ruin a perfectly good plan.”
Exhaustion pushed down on her shoulders, but anger lifted her up: sudden, hot anger. Indignation. “Shut up,” she said, wishing she had thought of some better words. Like maybe, How dare you?
“I’m doing my best. You threw me into this shitty situation and I’m doing everything I c-can.” The hard k sounds didn’t hurt so much when she was pissed off, she realized. “I’m the one chasing this bloodsucker, not you. I think I deserve a little respect.”
“Oh?” he asked.
“Yes. If I hadn’t taken action he could have revived Malvern. He could have carried her out of here while you just watched.”
Arkeley’s deep-set eyes twinkled a little, even the one under his paralyzed eyelid. “Interesting,” he said.
“Fucking fascinating,” she replied, though she had no idea what he was talking about.
“You seem to be under the false impression that our pale friend came here to rescue her.” Arkeley’s mouth moved in a way that might have conveyed some kind of emotion on a normal face. On his features it just looked like a worm crawling from one cheek to the other. “Come with me.”
42.
TIME it was that proved our undoing. We were in danger of our lives all that day. We dared not do anything to alleviate our fears, or to improve our situation. We periodically checked on Simonon & his men, but they did not stir or make any sign of decamping. I think we all guessed what they waited for. For night, & the return of the vampire, from wherever he had gone. We knew he was not in the house, for we had seen his coffin, & it was empty. If he did not return, would we be trapped for the next day as well, & the next? Simonon looked a patient man, for all the tales of his butchery Storrow could relate.
The day passed as they do. Soldiers know how to wait; it is what they learn best. We passed our time as we might. I longed to return to the door down the hall & speak again with Bill, but I did not.
As orange light tinctured the sky above the trees I think we all held our breath, uncertain whether to feel relieved, or affeared. There was some excitement in the Reb camp as well, of a not wholly different character, I think. The tension grew, & mounted, but it did not last long. We Yanks, German Pete, Storrow, Nudd, & me, crowded the window, & didn’t worry who might see our faces there.
None of us saw him come, though the horses smelled him perhaps. They bucked & tore at their lines, & made as if to bolt. Their neighing was the loudest thing I’d heard that day, I thought. & then he was present, the vampire Obediah Chess, standing next to the fire as if warming his pale flesh. As if he’d been there all along.
—THE STATEMENT OFALVAGRIEST
43.
Arkeley led her back to the museum, back to the lower level, where Malvern still lay in her coffin. As they approached Caxton looked down at the old vampire, trying to piece things together.
There wasn’t much left of Malvern. Her skin had turned to paper, still snowy white but riddled with dark sores. It had pulled away in places, hanging in tatters. Most of her scalp was missing, revealing yellow bone underneath. Her triangular ears hung down ragged and limp. One of her eyes was missing—it always had been—and the other was just a milky blob of flesh that wobbled back and forth in its socket.
Caxton doubted she could see anything with that eye.
That didn’t mean she was gone, though. When Caxton leaned down over the coffin, Malvern’s head craned forward on its spindly neck, her jaws opening in slow motion. She could sense Caxton’s presence somehow, and was trying to bite her, to tear into her flesh and suck her blood.
When Caxton pulled back the jaws closed, just as slowly as they’d opened.
The vampire from Gettysburg, her vampire, should have looked like that. Any vampire over a hundred years old should be that decayed and weak. Though he had fed on Geistdoerfer’s blood, that should not have been enough. They still had no idea how he was able to walk, even to stand up. Much less how he could outrun a police cruiser or throw her around like a rag doll.
Arkeley cleared his throat. Caxton turned and saw him standing next to a display case. Inside stood the head and shoulders of a man with his skin and part of his musculature removed. His blood vessels had been painstakingly exposed and plasticized, painted different colors to differentiate between the veins and arteries. On top of the case stood a cheap black laptop computer. Arkeley popped it open and raised the screen so she could see it.
“You’ll remember that she warned us,” he said. “She told us that he would come for her.” He tapped the space bar and the computer woke from its sleep mode. On the screen a white window appeared, the text field of a word processing program. Malvern’s original message was displayed there in large italic type, completed and therefore a little more legible now: