23 Hours: A Vengeful Vampire Tale(7)

“It’s not right,” Clara said, knowing she’d already lost. “She deserves better. For all the people she saved—for all the good she did, she deserves better than to rot in a cell for so long. I mean, hell, without her there wouldn’t be a special subjects unit.”

Fetlock gave her a warm smile. “And because of her, it was almost disbanded. We walk a very thin line, Hsu, and we can’t afford to forget that. We have special powers to execute vampires on sight—the legality, the constitutionality of those powers has never been questioned, but if it ever was they would evaporate in a heartbeat. Then our job wouldn’t just be hard, it would be impossible. The three of us have to be above suspicion, at all times. Even just associating with a known felon is putting the future of the unit at risk.”

He had a point, of course. The SSU had been created as an ad hoc working group within the Marshals Service, but no high official had ever written up a charter for it or done anything to give it legal standing. So far no one had come forward to complain about what they were doing—the vast majority of people preferred not to publicly acknowledge that vampires were a real threat. But if they ever really screwed up, say by shooting a living human being by mistake, the press, government watchdog groups, and Internal Affairs would descend like vultures and the SSU would be no more.

“Alright, alright,” she said, holding up her hands in surrender. She walked away from Fetlock, not even wanting to look at him. He turned instead to Glauer, who gave him a good-natured shrug.

Suddenly she didn’t want to be around either of them. She went over to the far corner of the room and pretended to study some scuff marks on the wall. Far enough away that Fetlock must have believed she couldn’t hear what he said next.

The Fed leaned in close to speak to Glauer. Man to man— they would be elbowing each other in the ribs soon enough. “So she’s in prison,” Fetlock whispered, and she could tell from his tone of voice that he was about to try to make a joke. He did that, every once in a while, and every time it made Clara cringe. “It’s not that bad, is it? I mean, come on. She’s gay. For her, this has to be like going away to summer camp.”

Glauer earned a little credit in Clara’s book then, because he didn’t laugh.





4.

They carried Caxton through the prison halls at a fast jog. She was wrapped up in a thick blanket that pressed against her nose and mouth and made it difficult to breathe. She couldn’t see where she was, much less where they were going. Finally they brought her into a small echoing room and dumped her on the floor. COs in full riot gear stood around her with stun guns, ready for her to jump up and attack them on sight. When she didn’t, they stepped out of the room and a pair of female COs in stab-proof vests replaced them.

“What’s going on?” Caxton asked. She looked around and found herself in a room lined with dingy white tiles. There was a large steel bathtub on one side of the room and what looked like medical equipment hanging on the opposite wall.

“Strip,” one of the COs said. A big woman wearing eye protection. She leaned against a plastic table and stared out the window. The other CO, who had a harelip, kept her eyes glued on Caxton. She didn’t even blink.

Caxton knew this routine. She’d been a cop in her previous life. There were times when you were handling a prisoner when you couldn’t predict what they were going to do, so you made sure they didn’t have any options. She understood that she wouldn’t be allowed to ask any questions and that if she didn’t do exactly what the guard told her, the men with the stun guns would come back in and do it for her. Looking down at the floor, she unfastened the Velcro strip that held her jumpsuit closed in the front.

“Everything. Off,” the big CO said, while studying her own fingernails.

Caxton kicked off her slippers, then peeled off her underwear and her bra. It was very cold in the little room and she started to wrap her arms around herself, but the CO with the harelip took a step forward and grabbed her arms and pulled them down at her sides.

“Don’t touch anything. Keep your hands where we say,” the big CO told Caxton. “Now, we’re going to search you. Do not move. Do not swallow. Do not flinch.”

Harelip pulled on plastic gloves and then ran her fingers through Caxton’s hair. She took a flashlight from her pocket and pointed it into her mouth and her ears. She lifted up Caxton’s arms and checked her armpits, then told Caxton to lift up her breasts so she could check underneath.