23 Hours: A Vengeful Vampire Tale(80)

“She’s done fine so far,” Caxton said, but she sounded halfhearted even to herself. “If I lower my shotgun, will you lower your sidearm?”

“No,” the warden said. “I think not. If you lower your weapon, I’ll shoot you where you stand.”

“Why?” Caxton demanded. “How does that help anyone?”

“It could help me a great deal. Malvern’s obsessed with you. She wants you alive so she can make you her plaything. Oh, she has big plans for Laura Caxton. But if you’re dead when she wakes up in a little while—”

“She’ll kill you. For thwarting her.”

“You really think so?” the warden looked upward as if considering it. “I know she’ll be angry, sure. But she’s too smart to throw away someone she needs, just because they disobeyed her once. And when she’s not fixating on you, she can be a very rational creature.”

Caxton had to admit that was true.

“And then at least I would have a chance of getting what I want—the curse. No, your dying right now would be great for me. I’m thinking about shooting you right now, shotgun in my face or not. I’m wondering if I can kill you before you kill me.”

“I doubt it,” Caxton said.

The warden pursed her lips in thought. “Yes. So do I. So that’s not how we’re going to play it, either.”

“Alright,” Caxton said. “Tell me how it goes.”

“I’m going to walk out of here. You aren’t going to follow me. After that, you can do whatever you want. Go downstairs, get yourself killed. That way I still win.”

“There’s a chance I won’t die down there.”

The warden laughed. “A slim one, I suppose. But say you do live to see the sun go down tonight. What will you do then?”

Caxton shrugged. “I’ll rescue Clara. Then I’ll kill Malvern.”

“You think she’ll make it that simple? A woman who has spent the last three hundred years surviving when all the world wanted her dead, and it will just come down to one last showdown with her latest nemesis? She’s too smart to let you get close enough to try.”

Caxton had to admit the woman had a point. “She’s made a mistake this time. She’s decided she’s willing to risk everything for a chance to turn me into a vampire, and now she’s got herself stuck in a corner. She can’t leave the prison—there must be a hundred cops outside right now, waiting for her to make a move. So she’s got nowhere left to run.”

“You may be underestimating her.”

Caxton’s blood surged in her head. That, of course, was always the worst mistake you could make with a vampire. Especially a smart one. She’d spent the last few years learning just how foolish it was to underestimate Malvern. But she didn’t see what kind of trick the old vampire could pull this time. She had finally run out of clever ideas.

Hadn’t she?

“If you live long enough, you’re going to find that things aren’t exactly what they seem here. Where Miss Malvern is involved, I suppose they never are.” The warden stood up very slowly from her desk. “Well. I’ll be off now.”

“Wait,” Caxton said, as the warden started edging toward the door. “Where’s Clara? Just tell me that much.”

“She escaped,” the warden said. “The little bitch hurt me, bad, and got away when I was lying on the floor curled up in a ball of pain. Last thing I heard she was shacked up with one of the gangs. I don’t know where.”

Caxton nodded in gratitude, and relief, and a funny mixed-up pride in Clara for being so tough. “And where’s Malvern? You said yourself that you’re afraid of what’ll happen when she wakes up. Tell me where she is and I’ll make sure that never happens. If I can find her before nightfall—”

“I wouldn’t tell you, even if I knew. I’m still holding out a certain hope that this is going to work out for me.”

“That you’ll become a vampire? That’s what you really want?”

“Everyone has a dream,” Bellows said. She shrugged. “I’ll tell you what I know, because it isn’t going to help you. She went off somewhere at dawn with a couple of half-deads. Presumably to her coffin. I don’t know where the coffin is. It’s not in my office, which is the last place I saw it. When I asked the half-deads where they put her, they said they were sworn not to tell me. That’s when I realized, you see, that she didn’t trust me. That she might not fulfill her promise.”