The girl’s face fell. It was a dangerous game, but Caxton had to try to reason with her. “Listen, it’s not too late. After a certain time every vampire is the same, they lose their respect for human life and they become sociopaths. But I know you’re not one of them yet. There’s still plenty of humanity in you. Turn yourself in. Or if not that, at least help me destroy your father.”
The vampire had been standing up. Instantly she dropped to the floor, propping herself up on her arms until her face was hovering over Caxton’s. Close enough that Caxton’s whole body shivered with the creeping horror of almost being touched.
“At the convent, they used to ask me why I ever tried heroin in the first place. Why would I try something so addictive and dangerous, when I knew the risks? I told them, the world hurts, but drugs feel good. It’s a no-brainer. The only downside was that every time I shot up I got weaker. Now I’ve got blood. Blood feels good. And it makes me stronger. I think I’ll stick with the plan.”
She jumped back up to her feet, then reached down and picked Simon up easily in her arms.
“When you begged him not to kill me—was that an act?”
The vampire looked up at the ceiling. “No,” she sighed. “No. You’d been nice to me. Nicer than most people in my life. You wanted to protect me. You thought I was worth saving. Just like Daddy.”
“I still think so. I can’t give you your life back, but I can preserve what’s left of your soul,” Caxton pleaded.
“Don’t you remember?” Raleigh asked. “Vesta Polder looked for that once, and she couldn’t find it. It’s already gone.”
She picked up Caxton effortlessly and threw her down on the couch. “Don’t try to follow me. I have instructions not to kill you. Daddy wants you to live for now. But if you come after me, I can hurt you. A lot.”
She swept out into the hall then, Simon tucked under her arm like a bag full of dirty laundry.
Caxton lay where she was for a second. Just a second to catch her breath. And to let Raleigh get enough of a head start. Then she jumped to her feet and raced down the hallway. It was her belief that Raleigh was taking Simon straight to their father—straight back to the lair.
She pushed through the front doors and hurried toward the Mazda, only stopping when she heard the doors burst open again behind her. She whirled around, ready to kill the first evil bastard she saw. Vesta Polder was there, shrieking wildly, her veil hanging by one pin like a broken wing on the side of her head.
She must have been pushed through the doors, because she was rolling on the ground, one arm underneath her, the other up as if fending off a blow. Fetlock came after her, Caxton’s old Beretta 92 in his hand. There was a cut on his face and his hair was in disarray. He was breathing hard and sweating profusely. He looked up at Caxton, his mouth open to try to catch his breath. Then he pointed the Beretta at Vesta’s skinless left temple and blew her brains all over the asphalt.
For a second Caxton held his gaze. Then she slipped into the driver’s seat of her car and started up the ignition. All the car tracks leading out of the parking lot headed in the same direction—east, toward the highway. That was the way Raleigh and the half-deads had gone.
Simon had twenty-four hours to live. When the deadline came, if Jameson offered him the curse, knowing what the alternative was—Caxton did not believe the son would say no.
Caxton threw the car into gear, intending to chase after Raleigh and the half-deads whether they liked it or not. The car surged under her—then died. The engine stalled out and she felt every muscle in her body tense up. She switched the car off, then back on. Put it in drive. The car shuddered and lurched forward, then stopped as the engine sputtered to a halt.
It took her too long to figure it out. It took her ten long minutes to get the hood open and see that the half-deads had monkeyed with her engine, and even longer to fix what they’d done. By the time she got back on the road heading east they were long gone, and there were no tracks to follow.
She didn’t waste any more time by getting frustrated. Instead she pulled a U-turn and headed west.
There was one more lead she could follow, she knew. One last chance to find out where the lair was.
She knew she would take that chance—even if it meant throwing away her entire career.
Chapter 51.
She had to drive through the downtown section of Harrisburg to get where she was going. She passed through streets full of little stores, boutiques selling pricey clothes. In one window she saw a pair of young women laughing together as they dressed a mannequin in a bright red minidress with white fur trimming.
At another store the proprietor was stringing up red and green lights. They were getting ready for Christmas.
Christmas. Caxton hadn’t celebrated the holiday much since her parents died. But the year before, when it had just been her and Clara, they’d exchanged presents, and drank eggnog, and even strung up mistletoe. She’d gotten Clara a special lens for her camera, one she’d been looking at online for months.
Clara’s present to her had been a box of bath salts, scented candles, and a wooden massage roller.
Things to help her relax. Most of them were still in the box, which sat underneath the bathroom sink in the back of the cabinet, where she saw it every time she reached for a new disposable razor.
She could use that box now, she thought. She needed to relax, to get frosty, if she was going to pull this off.
She pulled into the parking lot of the jail in Mechanicsburg and switched off the car. She wanted to just sit there for a while and collect her thoughts, but she knew if she did she would never get up and out of the car, so she reached over and pushed the door open and let the cold winter air belly inside, the icy breeze pressing her coat against her body and stinging her cheek. She popped open her seat belt and then climbed out of the car and shut the door behind her.
Inside the jail only a few corrections officers were still at work. The cells were quiet, the prisoners inside either sleeping or contemplating their fates. As one corrections officer—one, thankfully, she had not met before—led her down a flight of stairs to the basement, she started to hear someone yelling, not saying anything, just making inarticulate noises. She was not surprised to learn it was Dylan Carboy making that racket.
“He’s not quite all there, you know that, right?” the CO asked. “He does this all night. It’s weird. It’s like he’s praying, but not to any God I ever heard of. You’ll have to keep an eye on him.”
Caxton nodded. She handed the CO a clipboard on which she’d filled out the appropriate forms. She had lied many times while checking the various boxes and writing in the numbers and authorizations required. She had put down Fetlock’s name as authorizing the transfer, then put her own phone number below it. If anyone called to confirm her authority her phone would ring and she would at least know they were onto her.
She doubted they would, however. Transfers like this happened all the time and cops tended to trust each other. She was counting on that.
“You’re with the Marshals Service,” the CO said, leafing through her paperwork. “This guy commit some kind of federal crime? We have him down for a couple local homicides.”
“He broke into the USMS archives and stole some files,” she lied. “I’m taking him to the field office up in Harrisburg, where we can ask him what was in those documents that he wanted.”
“Huh. Do you guys do a lot of interrogations at night?”
“When the subject sleeps all day, we do. We figure he’ll be more talkative now than tomorrow morning.”
The CO smiled. “You know about him, then.”
“I’m the one who originally brought him in. Listen, I’ll make it as quick as I can. I’ll probably have him back to you before breakfast.”