Vampire Zero (Laura Caxton, #3)(5)

Something in her chest loosened up and she sagged against the side of the car. Suddenly she cared very little about this idiot Rexroth, or anything else keeping her away from her bed. How long had it been since she’d had a true night’s sleep? Even a fitful six hours she could call her own? She couldn’t even remember. There was too much in her head these days to let her ever truly relax.

“Trooper?” Glauer asked.

Her eyes snapped open. How long had they been closed? She didn’t know.

“What do you want me to do?” the police officer asked.

“His rights,” she told Glauer. “Read him his rights now. Then take him to the hospital. When they discharge him, take him to a holding cell somewhere. Process him and book him with the two homicides. With—Christ, whatever. With endangering a police officer. With whatever else you can think of.”

“A holding cell where?” he asked.

It was actually a good question. The SSU didn’t have any dedicated lockup facilities. She hadn’t considered they might ever need a cell of their own. “The local jail is fine. Coordinate with the locals—this can be their case, it’s outside our brief.”

He nodded, but he didn’t look satisfied.

“What?” she demanded.

“Don’t you want to interrogate him yourself?” he asked.

“Not right now.” She looked for her car, found it where she’d parked it when she arrived. Back when she thought she might be driving to her final showdown with Arkeley. What a joke. She started walking away.

“Hey,” he called, “aren’t you going to stick around?”

“No,” she said. “In four hours I need to get up and get dressed again. I’ve got a funeral to go to.”





Vampire Zero





Chapter 4.


The sun had turned the kitchen windows a shade of pale blue by the time she’d finished her breakfast and started getting dressed. Out back it touched the dark shape of the empty outbuildings behind the house. It lit up one wall of the shed where Deanna’s artwork used to hang, before she’d taken it down and folded it carefully and put it in a trunk in the crawl space, with the rest of Deanna’s things she hadn’t had the heart to throw out. It lit up the kennels, too—also empty. The last three dogs she’d boarded there, a trio of rescue greyhounds, had all moved on to better homes. She hadn’t had a chance to pick up any more dogs since, though there were plenty who needed her help.

The house felt cold and dark, even as the sun grew stronger. Laura knotted her tie on top of her white dress shirt and then pulled on her one pair of dress pants. She looked around for her black blazer and realized she’d left it in the bedroom closet.

She was about to go and get it when Clara came out of the bedroom already dressed in a modest black dress. Her silky black hair, cut just below the ears, was clean and shiny. Laura had worked hard at being quiet so she wouldn’t wake Clara up, but she must have been getting ready the whole time.

“Here,” Clara said, handing her the blazer. “We need to get moving. It’s at least an hour-?and-?a-?half drive. Longer if we’re picking up the Polders.”

Laura took a deep breath. “I said you didn’t have to come. You always hated him.”

Clara smiled warmly. Far more warmly than Laura deserved. “I did, and still do. But funerals are one of the few times I actually get to spend time with you, these days.”

Laura stepped closer to take the blazer, then pulled Clara into a deep hug. She didn’t know what to say. That she would try to change that, to spend more nights at home? She couldn’t make that promise. Clara was the one spark of light left to her. The only thing that felt good. She was losing her, and she knew it.

“Okay. Do you want anything to eat?”

“I’m fine for now,” Clara told her. “Do you want me to drive?”

Laura did.

The two of them had gone to a lot of funerals together in the previous two months. Gettysburg had been a success from one point of view—from the point of view of the local tourism board. The civilian population of the town had survived, because Caxton had them evacuated the day before the fighting began. From a law enforcement perspective it had been a fiasco. Local cops, SWAT officers from Harrisburg, even kids from the National Guard, had died by the dozens. They had laid down their lives to keep the vampires from getting out into the general population. More than one family had sent Caxton hate mail after that, but she had made a point of going to every funeral she could. This one was a little different. No, it was a lot different.

They didn’t talk much on the way to Centre County. Laura found herself nodding off and then jerking back to wakefulness every time she got near to real sleep. It was a familiar feeling, if not a welcome one. Before they reached State College Clara pulled off of the highway and took them deep into a zone of high ridges and dead fields, brown and golden and slathered with snow. They passed weathered farmhouses and barns that looked like they’d been hit by bunker-?busting bombs, some of them slumped over on their sides. They passed a herd of unhappy-?looking cows, and then Clara turned off once again, onto a dirt path that was easy to miss if you didn’t know where to find it. They pulled up in front of a farmhouse that looked in better shape than most, with a well-?kept barn and a silo hung with hex signs. The Polders were waiting outside for them. Urie Polder, still wearing his Caterpillar baseball cap, had put a black parka over his stained white T-?shirt. It hid most of his wooden arm, but not the three twiglike fingers that stuck out the end of the sleeve. He used them to scratch at his freshly shaven cheek and Laura saw them move, as prehensile as human fingers. That weird hand was actually stronger and more deft than his normal one. Vesta Polder was dressed in the same dress she always wore, a long-?skirted black sheath that buttoned all the way up her neck and down her wrists. Her wild blond hair was pinned back, though, and she wore a black veil that completely obscured her face. They were the strangest people Laura had ever met, but they had also proved themselves good friends. When the car stopped, Urie gestured back at the house with his wooden hand and the door opened. A little girl, maybe twelve years old, came racing out. She wore a smaller version of Vesta’s dress but her blond hair was covered by a white lace bonnet. Her eyes were very wide. Laura was a little shocked. She’d known for some time the Polders had a daughter, but she’d never actually been introduced to her. As the couple settled into the backseat of the car, the girl perching on her mother’s lap, Urie cleared his throat noisily and then said, “This here’s Patience, she’s a good girl, ahum.”