Vampire Zero (Laura Caxton, #3)(75)

“That’s not—you’re making a mistake. This was just a dumb accident. She misjudged the dosage. That’s all!”

Caxton shook her head. “We have to cremate her body, before dark. I’ve made this mistake before. And it cost me everything.”





Vampire Zero





Chapter 45.


Caxton had been worried about Simon. She had worried that Jameson would approach Simon, and make his offer, and that Simon would say yes. She had barely even considered the notion it would be Raleigh, poor timid little Raleigh, so fragile that Jameson had to rescue her and stick her somewhere quiet so very far from the real world.

She grabbed the yellow pages and started dialing. She needed an emergency cremation—before four-?thirty. That was a little over two hours away. The first three places she tried didn’t even do cremation. It wasn’t listed as a category in the directory—she was just dialing funeral homes at random. The fourth number connected her to a very polite, very understanding man who assured her that it was quite impossible.

“I’d need the approval of the next of kin.”

“I’m a U.S. Marshal,” she said. “Can I order a cremation even without permission?”

“Not unless you’re also a health official. Otherwise, you need family approval.”

“Her brother’s the only one left. I’ll make him say yes.”

“Make him? There are regulations that apply to this industry,” he said. “Even if he says yes, we would also need a death certificate.”

“I promise you, this body is dead.”


The polite man coughed, a sound she could have interpreted as a laugh if she liked. Apparently in the mortuary industry you learned how to be diplomatic. But Caxton knew she was already beaten. Without a death certificate there was no chance, and to get one she would have to wait for a coroner to come and pronounce the body. If she waited for that, then took the time to drive to the funeral home—it could already be too late.

Glauer and Simon took turns attempting to talk her out of the cremation altogether. The big cop said it wasn’t necessary, that Raleigh’s death had been an accident. He said that Jameson had never had a chance to pass on his curse. “You were there, the whole time,” he said. “You heard what they said to each other.”

“You can pass the curse on with a look. That’s all it takes,” she insisted.

“But don’t you remember, the curse has to be passed on in silence? Justinia Malvern even called it ‘The Silent Rite.’ If they were talking, they couldn’t do it.”

Caxton considered that a good point, but largely immaterial. “He could have passed her the curse any time. Long before I got there. I was going on her word that she hadn’t had contact with him in six months, but what if she was lying?”

It was Simon’s turn. “She would never do such a thing,” he told her. “She was terrified of the sight of blood. Whenever she would scrape a knee, back when we were kids, she would go run and hide under the sofa.”

“She didn’t seem to mind needles. And where there are needles, there’s blood,” Caxton told him. “She got over it.”

No one could convince her. She couldn’t afford to let anyone convince her. She stormed out of the room and down the hall, into a wardroom where a number of troopers were gathered around some snack machines. “You four, come with me,” she said, and headed out through the main doors of the building. It was cold out in the parking lot and snow was falling—not the blizzardlike torrent she’d seen at Syracuse, just a few scattered flakes, but it made her turn up her collar. “Come on,” she said, and led them behind the building. There were domes back there to hold road salt, and a long low shed that held emergency road barriers. She opened up the wide doors of the shed and ushered in her four draftees. Inside stood hundreds of wooden sawhorses painted in reflective white and yellow. She told each of the men to grab one, and picked one up herself. It was heavy. She didn’t care.

In the parking lot she had the men dump the sawhorses in an untidy heap. She piled her own on top. It didn’t look like enough. “More,” she said, and they went back. One of the troopers asked her what they were doing. She told him to shut up and grab a sawhorse, and he did. They brought their loads back to the parking lot and dropped them on top of the pile with a clattering, clonking noise. The legs of the sawhorses kept them from piling up the way she might like. While she sent the men back for one more round she climbed on top of the pile, then jumped up and down on it, coming down hard on the legs with her boots. Some of them snapped off. The men brought more sawhorses—and she had them dump them and go back again.

Glauer and Simon stood by the doors, watching her. She figured they understood what she was doing, but she wasn’t particularly concerned. They weren’t actively trying to stop her. When the troopers came, grumbling among themselves, with one more load of wood, she nodded in acceptance and rearranged some of the timber to make the pile more symmetrical.

“Now,” she said, “you. Go down to the motor pool and get the biggest jerry can of gasoline they can give you. You two—go inside, into the barracks. There’s a body on one of the beds. Wrap it up in a sheet and bring it out here.”

If the crematorium wouldn’t do it, she’d burn up Raleigh’s remains herself. She climbed on top of the pile and started kicking at the legs again, trying to make a more solid heap of fuel.