Vampire Zero (Laura Caxton, #3)(79)

“This is important,” she insisted. “This is life or death.”

Fetlock shrugged, but he didn’t say anything more. Caxton moved closer to the corpse, her weapon low but ready. She brought her free hand up and stretched it toward the sheet, looking for the telltale cold feeling that radiated from a vampire’s body. That was enough to make Fetlock react—he came up behind her and pulled her gently away.

“I’ll talk to Simon Arkeley and see if he’ll allow a cremation anyway,” Fetlock said. “But really, Trooper—”

“One more minute, please. Just one more minute, okay?”

“It’s illegal, you know, to desecrate a corpse. I could have you arrested right now,” Fetlock told her.

“I’m tired of this. Tell me something, does this building have a meat locker or anything? Someplace to hold the body until we can send for a hearse?”

Captain Suzie stepped forward to answer. “Yes, sir. We have an actual morgue, believe it or not. It’s where we keep highway accident victims if the bodies are felt to be of an evidentiary nature.”

Fetlock rolled his eyes. “I suppose that’ll do very well, then. You—Officer—go down to the infirmary and have them send up a stretcher. We’ll move her to the morgue right away.”

“Hold on!” Caxton demanded. “Jesus Christ, am I the only one who knows that you don’t take chances with vampires? Fetlock, Jameson taught me never to underestimate them. Give it just a few more minutes. I’m begging you.”

“I’m sure Jameson taught you a lot of bad habits, too,” Fetlock told her. She grunted in frustration. “He taught me how to fight monsters. He wouldn’t have let you have the body. He would have burned it in the parking lot, and if you had come and told him to stop he would have just ignored you and kept going. You could have shot him in the back and it wouldn’t have stopped him. He didn’t care if people thought his behavior was erratic, he just cared about doing things right.”

“And look where that got him,” Fetlock said, smiling. “Your loyalty would be commendable, if you weren’t honoring a vampire. Let’s go, you two—one of you take the shoulders, the other the feet.”

“No!” Caxton shouted. “Not yet!”

“Trooper,” Fetlock said. “Look.” He pointed at the window. Even Caxton had to admit that true dark had fallen. The window was a pane of unbroken blackness. She could see the reflection of her own stark raving face in it. “Night is upon us. If she was going to rise, she would have already.”

Caxton let her head drop. Maybe, she began to think, he was right. Maybe she had crossed some kind of line, into a sort of madness. Had she let Jameson’s tricks and mind games distort her own faculties?

She turned to go, to leave the room. Still, even then, she half-?expected Raleigh to sit up behind her and hiss with bloodlust. Before Caxton could take a step she heard Fetlock cough. He had a hand out, palm up. He’d already taken her badge. Now he wanted her gun.

“Don’t even think about it,” she protested.

“I don’t want you hurting anyone. I’m going to insist you go home and get some rest. In the meantime, I’ll hold on to your sidearm.”

She shook her head—made a good show of it. Eventually she pretended to relent, and handed her gun over. That was fine. That was exactly what she’d meant to happen. Her new gun, the one with the cop-?killers in it, was in the car. Fetlock could take her off the case, but she knew she wasn’t finished with Jameson yet.

Outside of the room she headed for the parking lot and her car. Halfway there she heard her phone ring, the old phone with its Pat Benatar ringtone. She thought it might be Clara. Clara! How could she explain to Clara everything that had happened? When she pulled out the phone and checked the screen, though, she saw it was in fact Vesta Polder who was calling her.

“Vesta,” she said. “This is kind of a weird time. What’s up?”

“It’s about Jameson,” the older woman said. Her voice sounded weird, as if it were a bad line or as if she’d been crying. “He came for me.”





Vampire Zero





Chapter 48.


Oh shit oh shit oh shit, Caxton thought. She grabbed at her forehead and squeezed it with her free hand. When Jameson hadn’t attacked in Syracuse she’d thought he was lying low. That she’d created too much trouble for him—or that he was waiting for her to make some stupid move, to take Raleigh and Simon someplace undefended, someplace they could be gotten at easily. She hadn’t even considered he might be busy with some other agenda. “I don’t understand—he visited you, he offered you the curse?

That doesn’t make sense. You’re not part of his family.”

“Does your last name have to be Arkeley to be part of that brood?” Polder asked. “He’s coming for everyone he loves, Laura. Everyone he ever loved.”

Of course.

Vesta had told Caxton how she and Jameson had once had an affair. She must still mean something to him, no matter how far he’d fallen into darkness. “Listen,” Caxton said. “He’s not still there, at your house?”

“No, he’s gone. I suppose I should have made some attempt to fight him, or at least track him when he left, but I was too scared. I know you understand that.”