13 Bullets Part 26

She coughed to find her voice. "I don't. This son of a b.i.t.c.h raped me. Even now he's inside of me. I'm glad he can feel this." She knelt down next to the burning heart and watched it shrivel and fall to pieces. When it was nothing but orange embers, when the screaming had stopped, she picked up a smoldering piece of the heart with a rolled-up piece of paper and tossed it into the casket. The liquefied flesh inside went up like a fireball and cheerful little lines of fire ran across the wooden molding on the casket's lip.

"What are you going to do next?" Arkeley asked her.

"I'm going upstairs," she told him, because it was just that simple. But first she paused to find her Beretta. It felt very good, and very important, in her hand.

A pair of half-deads were standing near the trap-door. They were carrying a coffin between them, a plain wooden box that might have held tools once but it was just about human-sized. The coffin was meant for Caxton, for her vampiric rebirth. They'd built it while she slept. One of them wore a chrome Kaiser helmet. He had been a biker four days earlier, a ma.s.sively-built tough guy with a penchant for leather and grease. Reyes had taken him while he had stopped at a payphone. n.o.body remembered who he was going to call. "It can't be much longer now," the half-dead said, his voice high and shrill. He rubbed his skeletal hands together until bits of dried-up flesh flaked off. "The sun is almost up."

The other half-dead shook her fleshless head. "The sun. I didn't think I'd ever see the sun again. I would have paid cash money to see it and now... Jesus. What am I? What did he make me into?" she asked. She sounded confused and more than a little scared. Reyes had found her jogging just before dawn, out on a lonely rural road still carpeted with the night's haze. She had tried to run, but Reyes had been faster. "This is... this is h.e.l.l. I'm in h.e.l.l, I must be."

"Don't be so quick to write this off," the biker told her. "It's got its compensations." The female half-dead turned to look at her companion. "Compensations? Spending the rest of time as an undead freak with no face has an upside, is that what you're telling me? I can't eat, I can't sleep. My body is falling to pieces while I watch, literally corroded by contact with the air. Where the h.e.l.l is the silver lining in this?"

"Well," he told her, "it only lasts about a week." Caxton stepped out of the shadows then, a five-foot-long bar of solid iron in her hands. She brought it around in a sweeping blow that knocked the faceless head right off of his neck. His stringy body slowly collapsed to the floor.

She turned to face the other one, the female. The half-dead backed away from her, arms outstretched, begging. In a moment she was out of range and the heavy bar was an unwieldy weapon at best. Caxton threw it at her and winced as it clanged and rattled and banged on the concrete floor, well short of its target.

The half-dead turned and ran on wobbly legs. Caxton ran after her and caught her easily. She grabbed the female's hand and tore it free, threw it into the dark corner of the mill. She grabbed the left arm and it came off with barely any pulling at all.

The half-dead screamed and screamed. Finally she collapsed to the floor. Caxton stamped on her head with both feet until the screaming stopped.

She took a moment to breathe, just breathe. She stood alone in the darkness of the mill. The vampire was dead. That was something, wasn't it? She'd achieved something real and of tangible value. Maybe that was enough.

"You still need to get out of here alive," Arkeley told her. She'd stopped looking for him. He was nearby, that was what mattered. "All that noise will bring the others."

She nodded, accepting that he was right. She checked her Beretta. She had three bullets. There were at least thirteen half-deads still active in the mill. She couldn't take them all on at once. She couldn't take more than one or two at a time-she'd only prevailed against the biker and the jogger through the element of surprise. If they had been prepared, if she'd given them a chance to fight back, she would have lost. Her arms were shaky with stress and horror. She'd barely been able to lift the iron bar.

Okay, she thought, so if you can't fight, then run. The trouble was she didn't know what direction to head. The fire from the night before had burnt out and the mill was filled with darkness, great clotted heaps of it. There had to be an exit from the mill, a doorway leading out into the day, but she had no idea where to find it.

"If you can't decide, head for the nearest landmark. That'll at least help you get your bearings," Arkeley told her. She turned and headed into the depths of the mill, toward the crucible and the cold blast furnace. The sun had smeared a little white light on the tall windows and she could make out a few details here and there. She could see enough that she didn't trip over the piles of junk or the ankle-high molds that littered the floor.

She saw torn faces floating in the gloom, bodies swimming towards her out of the dark. She felt skeletal hands reaching for her. One touched her side, the wasted muscles of a half-dead hand closing on the fabric of her shirt. She swung her elbow backward, hard, and the hand fell away with a high-pitched squeak.

Ahead of her a red ruin of a face floated out of the gloom and she raised the Beretta and fired as the half-dead's arms came up to grab her. The half-dead cracked apart and exploded, but that left her with only two more rounds. She ducked under the attack of another half-dead and ran around the side of the crucible. Ahead she saw a pair of double swinging doors. A thin line of bluish light snuck in beneath them. She ran at the doors and threw her arms out to hit the pressure bars. The doors screamed open and she burst out into a courtyard enclosed by high brick walls on every side. Yellow gra.s.s burst from the ground all around her. She saw workbenches and old tool racks but there was no way out.

She was trapped. At least there was blue sky over her head. At least she was outside. She smelled the baking manure smell of Kennett Square and knew she couldn't be far from help. The south-eastern region of Pennsylvania was pretty heavily developed. If she could just get out of the courtyard she would be free.

There was no exit, however. No way out. She'd run right into a dead end. The walls on every side were solid, unbroken. They were too high to climb. The double doors rattled and a half-dead poked its skeletal head out into the open air. She raised her pistol and it ducked back inside. "Arkeley," she said, "what do I do?"

He didn't answer. Maybe he had no better ideas than she did. She had two bullets and maybe ten or twelve half-deads chasing her. She had no time.

Caxton grabbed the rough edge of a wooden table-really just a big sheet of plywood nailed to some sawhorses-and dragged it toward the far wall. She jumped up on top of it but she was still about seven feet too short to grab the top of the wall.

The double doors started moving again. One inched open, sc.r.a.ping on the uneven ground. She stared at it, almost as if she were hypnotized again, unable to move. If all the half-deads came out, if they were armed even with just knives or clubs, she was dead. She couldn't fight them all off.

"They're cowards," Arkeley told her. His voice was very soft. In the light of day she could barely hear him.

"What?" she asked, but she understood. "I only have two bullets," she pleaded with him, but she knew perfectly well by that point that he was just inside her head. That he was her own survival instinct, compartmentalized, made abstract.

She waited a moment to let the half-deads get cl.u.s.tered and then she fired both shots right into the crack between the two doors. She heard one high-pitched scream and a lot of excited shouts. Good enough. The gun was empty so she shoved it into her holster. Then she jumped down and grabbed another work table, then a pile of two-by-fours. Soon she had a rickety heap of wood that looked like it might collapse under its own weight, much less hers. She stared up at the tottering pile and thought there was no way she could get up it, no way she could then jump from the top of the a.s.semblage and grab the lip of the wall.

She knew what Arkeley would say. You only have to do it once, and if you fall and break your neck, it won't matter for very long. With hands that shook badly she hauled herself up the makeshift scaffolding. She got her feet on the top level, an over-turned wheelbarrow. She put one foot on a wheel and it spun away from her. Carefully, her body trembling like gra.s.s in the wind, she got to the top and launched herself up the side of the wall. The heap collapsed beneath her, leaving her ten feet up in the air with no support.

One of her hands found the top of the wall and clamped on, hard. Her other hand swung free but she fought her momentum and made it grab the wall as well. Then she heaved, pulling her own weight up onto the top of the wall. From up there she could see that the courtyard was surrounded by mill buildings on three sides. The fourth side fronted a country lane. A road-which had to lead somewhere. It had to lead to safety. There was a fifteen-foot drop on that side. She didn't let herself think about it, just lowered herself down as far as she could with her arms and then let go.

The ground came up very hard and very fast. It crushed the wind right out of her, making her broken ribs sing a high plaintive howl of agony but the rest of her seemed okay. No broken limbs, anyway. She rolled to her feet and started running down the road, intending to flag down the first car she saw.

She was free.

Part IV - Scapegrace.

His thoughts were red thoughts/ and his teeth were white. -Saki, "Sredni Vashtar" They had a shower in the back of the local cop shop, with fresh towels and good soap and everything. It wasn't too surprising-the local chief of police was a woman. Caxton was a little surprised not to find a bathtub, though she supposed that wouldn't be too professional. She spent a lot longer getting clean than she probably needed to.

While disrobing she found Vesta Polder's charm still hanging around her neck, grimy with her sweat and general dirt. She cleaned it off and held it up to the light and didn't see anything different than she had before. It was just a spiral of metal, cool to the touch. Whether it had helped her or failed her she had no idea. Maybe that was how such things worked. Maybe it was entirely psychosomatic, or maybe it had been the only thing that saved her from Reyes' domination. She imagined she would never know.

By the time she'd finished cleaning up the paramedics had already arrived to take a look at her. They told her she'd been very lucky, that the broken ribs she complained of were just sprained, and would heal nicely in a week or two. She had a lot of minor lacerations and contusions which they painted with antiseptic and put bandages on and then they went away.

Then she dressed up in the street clothes the chief had offered her, which were only a little too big, and sat down in the break room with a yellow legal pad and started trying to write her story down. Caxton had never been very good at long reports. They always made her think of writing papers in her abortive attempt at college. Still, she told the story as plainly as she could, with as much detail as she could remember. She only stopped when Clara arrived.

Clara. Caxton had asked specifically for the sheriff's photographer to come drive her home. She had called Deanna, but mostly just to make sure she was okay. Deanna was still in the hospital and couldn't come for her. Clara had been her second choice, of course. When Clara came into the break room, though, Caxton knew better, just by way she felt seeing Clara again. She held out one bandaged hand and Clara took it, then came closer and just stood there for a moment before awkwardly leaning down and kissing Caxton on the top of her head.

Warmth-stemming from both embarra.s.sment and other causes-spread through Caxton's face and down her neck. "We thought you were dead," Clara said, her voice a little shaky. "We looked all night. Somebody called me yesterday morning because... because they thought I would want to know you were missing, and I came right away and joined the search party. We looked everywhere. We even checked out that steel mill but it was all locked up. Oh my G.o.d, I looked that place over myself and I didn't see anything."

"Don't be too hard concealing their hiding especially by moonlight." on yourself," places. They

Arkeley said. "They're masters of have charms to confuse the mind,

"He insisted on coming along," Clara said. Caxton frowned. She wanted to ask what Clara meant, whether Clara had heard Arkeley's voice as well, but then the Fed walked into the break room and sat down on the edge of the table. Caxton slowly realized he wasn't just in her head anymore. It was the real Jameson Arkeley, vampire killer.

It was truly weird to see him again. She had internalized him, made his personality part of her self, and it was the only way she had survived being Reyes' captive. He had come to represent something vital and necessary to her. The flesh-and-blood Arkeley, by comparison, was someone she didn't necessarily want to see.

She sighed. She had so much to tell him, though. So much he had to hear. "Special Deputy," she said, "I need to make a report to you."

His face contorted, the wrinkles all running one direction then another as if he couldn't decide whether to smile or frown. He finally settled on a painedlooking grimace. "I've already got the Cliff's Notes version. You killed Reyes." "I waited until dawn and then I burned his heart," she said.

"Unnecessary understatement is almost as bad as pointless embellishment." She stared up at him, her face devoid of any emotion. What she had to say was going to be important to him. "He tried to make me one of them." n.o.body moved or spoke after that. n.o.body dared break the silence until Arkeley reached up and rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. "Okay," he said. "Tell me while we drive."

She expressed her thanks to the local chief and they headed out back to where Clara's personal vehicle waited. It was a bright yellow Volkswagen, a New Beetle with a flower vase built into the dashboard. It was a lot like Clara herself-tiny, cute, and it came from a whole different world than the one Caxton inhabited. A world she could visit for a while but she'd never be allowed to stay there. The vampires would make sure of it.

Caxton crawled into the back while Arkeley took the front pa.s.senger seat. His fused vertebrae trumped her sprained ribs, he announced. She leaned forward between the front seats and told him about her ordeal. Clara drove not west, toward Harrisburg, but south-east, back toward Kennett Square. n.o.body bothered to tell Caxton why and she was too busy talking to ask.

"He used the Silent Rite on me, or at least that's what Malvern calls it. Just one of a long list of what she calls orisons. Reyes called it a hechizo." She didn't mention how she'd learned that word, how she'd tortured a half-dead by pulling his fingers off. She didn't want Clara to ever know about that. "It's a spell, or maybe some kind of psychic power. Either way, it's a violation of the brain. He shoved part of himself in through my eye sockets and took total control of my dreams. He could make me fall asleep against my will and he kept me in and out of the dream state. He showed me a vision of h.e.l.l, I guess, and waited for me to commit suicide."

"Hmph," Arkeley said.

"Something you want to add?" she asked.

He glared back at her with eyes wide as if she'd forgotten her place. She supposed she'd never used that tone with him before. It made her want to say "Hmph" herself.

"Every vampire I've studied killed him- or herself," he told her. "It's central to the curse. In Europe every suicide was questionable. They used to bury suicides at crossroads, the thinking being that vampires would be lost when they rose and wouldn't know the way home. In other times, in other places they buried suicides with their heads cut off and turned upside down or fired a bullet through the heart."

"A silver bullet?" Clara asked.

"That's a myth," Arkeley and Caxton said at once. Another opportunity to glare at each other. "The curse drives you to take your own life. Once it's in you the thought starts gnawing at you. You start thinking that all your problems would just go away if you were dead. That's the last step in the change, and it's necessary. He was very clear on that."

"Reyes went through this same process, most likely," Arkeley asked, voice neutral, just looking for data. "And Lares, and Malvern before him."

Caxton shook her head. "No. Reyes didn't require any of the dream magic bulls.h.i.t. He already wanted to die. Malvern looked into his soul and he said 'yes', just like that. Congreve-that's the vampire we killed together-took about three hours to convince. Reyes did him and the other one, the one with docked ears. Congreve was a construction worker. That's why he picked that site for his ambush. He had a master's degree in Renaissance music but he couldn't find a job with his degree, so he ended up working construction on a highway project. He hated it, hated everything about his life. Reyes capitalized on that and convinced Congreve to blow his own brains out. It was too hard for her to make happy, healthy people into vampires, so she went looking for real losers. People with nothing to hold them to life."