23 Hours: A Vengeful Vampire Tale(68)

A hand reached out of the darkness and grabbed the BlackBerry away from Clara. “She’s going to have to call you back, pig. Right now she’s too busy begging for her life.” Before Fetlock could say anything more the shadowy hand pressed a button to end the call. The BlackBerry’s screen went dark.

A moment later it started ringing again. That would be Fetlock calling back, Clara knew. Wanting more information, even when it wasn’t exactly convenient. The handheld was switched off and then disappeared from view.

“I’m warning you,” Clara said, drawing her pistol. “I’m a federal agent. Assaulting me could get you in real trouble, you could—”

“What?” someone asked. She thought it was the one who had laughed before. “We might go to jail?” A face loomed out of the darkness. It was grinning from ear to ear. At first Clara thought it belonged to a half-dead after all; the skin on the face was raw and irritated. Then she realized it was just burn scarring. The woman wore a pair of earrings in the shape of swastikas—no, Clara saw, those weren’t earrings. They were tattoos. Gaping in horror, Clara raised the pistol and pointed it directly at the woman’s burnt face. “I will use lethal force if you don’t—”

A bare foot came in from the left, fast and hard enough to break boards. It hit Clara’s gun hand and she screamed in pain. The pistol clattered to the floor.

“I didn’t break any bones,” the owner of the foot said. She stepped into the light and just smiled at Clara. It was the kind of smile you might see on the face of a shark as it circles a drowning sailor. Clara was disoriented by the pain in her hand, but not enough to miss the fact that this new assailant had her feet slight apart, in a martial arts fighting stance, and one fist balled at her waist, ready to punch at the slightest provocation.

There were tattoos on this one’s face, dark blue prison tattoos that looked as if her eye makeup had melted and run down her cheeks. Clara looked closer and saw that they were in the shape of teardrops.

“I’m Guilty Jen,” the woman said, and gave Clara a slight bow.

Clara had taken four free lessons in Tae Kwon Do before deciding she didn’t have the discipline to keep going. She’d thought they would at least teach her how to punch somebody, but instead they had just made her stand in various postures and move her feet back and forth, over and over, for hours at a time. She had, though, learned one valuable lesson about unarmed combat. If someone bows to you like that, whatever you do, don’t bow back. That just means you want to fight them.

Judging by the precision and the force in the kick that had disarmed her, Clara very, very much did not want to fight this woman.

“Special Deputy Hsu,” Clara said, keeping her posture perfectly straight.

Guilty Jen’s smile broadened. She relaxed her fighting stance a little. “So you’re Caxton’s famous girlfriend. Well, well, well. How lucky for you that we found you just now.”





37.

She looked younger. And skinnier,” someone said. Someone still back in the shadows. These people were smart enough not to all reveal themselves at once.

“What are you talking about, Queenie?”

“You know, in that movie. There was a whole scene of them making out. My man must have watched that scene a hundred times.”

Clara managed to blush, even though it felt like all the blood had drained out of her head and into her feet. She’d never been thrilled with the television movie they’d made of Laura’s exploits. It was called Teeth: The Pennsylvania Vampire Killings and the actress they’d gotten to play Clara had been Japanese and underage. She’d been beautiful, frankly, where Clara always thought of herself as cute. “They took a lot of liberties in the movie,” she said. “It wasn’t really like that at—”

“But you are Laura Caxton’s significant other?” Guilty Jen asked. “Think carefully before you answer. If you lie to me I’ll break a bone in your foot. Not so you can’t walk, mind. Just enough to make it hurt like f*ck.”

Clara swallowed convulsively. “I’m her partner,” she admitted.

“Caxton and I have bad history,” Guilty Jen said. “She messed up my set pretty bad. Before I could f*ck her back the hogs came in and ruined everybody’s fun. Fucking hogs.”

“Hogs?” Clara asked.

“The guards here, man, you know.” Queenie supplied.

Guilty Jen nodded. “So now I have a respect deficit with her, which is no good when I’m trying to organize things and do business in this place. If she was here right now I would just break her face and we’d be even, maybe. But she isn’t. You are. Now, I can get my respect back by putting my mark on you. I have my girls train you—you know what that is, a train?”