23 Hours: A Vengeful Vampire Tale(96)

Vampires had their own body odor. One that didn’t wash off. They smelled like the bottom of a hamster cage—a sick hamster’s cage. It was a nasty, animal smell, very faint, but it was one of the signs a vampire was nearby. Clara could just smell it now from ten feet away.

“You’re—Hauser, right? I was there when you took the curse,” Clara said, for lack of anything better. “In the warden’s office. Where is the warden, by the way?”

“Dead,” Hauser told her. “That was pretty much the first thing Malvern did, when she woke up tonight and found out how f*cked up things got during the day.”

Clara closed her eyes. If she’d had a plan—she hadn’t, not really, she knew she was screwed. But the brain kept trying to piece things together, even when all hope was gone. If she had consciously tried to think of a plan, it would have involved playing Malvern and the warden off each other. Widening the rift between the two of them. Apparently Malvern had taken the expedient course toward solving that problem.

“Hey, you. Hey,” Hauser said. She got up from the desk and took a step toward one of the other cages. “I know you’re awake.” The vampire kicked the cage and made it slide a foot and a half across the floor. Inside it someone struggled to grab at the bars and pull themselves upright.

“Laura,” Clara breathed, when she saw who it was.

Laura said nothing. She just sat down on the floor of her cage and lowered her head. One of her arms looked wrong. It was tucked up across her chest in a way that looked painful. Her face was bruised and one lip was puffy and swollen. But she was still alive.

“And you. Who the f*ck are you?” the vampire snarled, and grabbed the third occupied cage. She picked it up easily and then dropped it to the floor with a deafening clang. The woman inside rolled over and batted at the bars with one weak hand.

“You can call me… Gert. Or Gerty, whichever… you like.”

“She was Laura—I mean Caxton’s cellmate,” Clara told the vampire. If she could get Hauser to sit down again, to sit calmly, there was less chance of her accidentally killing one of them. Clearly she had orders not to, but vampires sometimes didn’t know their own strength. “She helped Caxton escape from the SHU.”

“This piece of trash got out of the hole? Shee-it,” Hauser said. “She’s about likely to have a heart attack right now. Well, f*ck her. She don’t have to survive very much longer. Just ’til five o’clock.”

Clara frowned. “What happens then?”

The vampire shrugged. “Ain’t up to me. It’s you three that decides. Malvern said twenty-three hours, and that’s what she’s got. When it’s almost up I’m supposed to ask you, do you want to be like me. Tougher than nails and live forever. Or do you want to die? Only there’s a catch.”

Of course there was. “What’s the catch?” Clara asked.

“You gotta be unanimous. All three of you become vampires or all three of you die. It seems kind of simple to me, but if even one of you vetoes it, you all get eaten.”

And so we’re going to die, Clara thought. There was no way any logical, thinking person would take the other choice, and become—

“I say yes, please,” Gert whispered.

In her cage, Caxton said nothing. She was picking at a piece of tape holding the foam rubber around a steel bar, just scraping away at it with a fingernail. She hadn’t even looked over at Clara. Hadn’t said a word.

Clara couldn’t help but think that was a bad sign.





53.

The tape came away, leaving Caxton’s fingers sticky and one fingernail broken. She dug a finger into the foam rubber wrapped around the bar of her cage and felt a sharp edge underneath. It was as she’d suspected—the bars weren’t bars at all, but strips of steel as flat as ribbons. You could cut yourself pretty well on the edge.

She looked up and saw the vampire standing over Clara’s cage. They were still talking. Well, that was fine. For now. She knew what Clara was trying to achieve. Hauser was a brand-new vampire. There was still plenty of humanity left in her—it took weeks for the bloodlust to take hold. Over time it would erode Hauser’s personality until there was nothing left. Each night she woke in a coffin she would feel less connection to the person she had once been. Each night she would think more and more often about blood, and how good it would taste running down her throat, and how little it mattered if she had to hurt people to get it. But for now, on her first night post-death, Hauser could be reasoned with. She could be talked around.