Vampire Zero (Laura Caxton, #3)(82)
“Jesus, what now?” Simon asked, stirring from his fetal position on the couch. Caxton kicked the couch hard and he jumped up to his feet. He stared at her with wild eyes, but she just shook her head, breathing too hard to talk. She grabbed one end of the couch and nodded for him to take the other end, and together they pushed it up against the door. It was only after she’d sealed herself inside that Caxton thought to look around for other exits. There were none. A row of windows lined the far side of the room, but they were not made to open, and Caxton knew they, like all of the HQ’s ground-?floor windows, were built of bullet-?resistant glass half an inch thick. She couldn’t just throw a chair through one of them and escape that way. Jameson had taught her never to barricade herself in a room with no other exit. She’d forgotten that lesson in her panic. She cursed herself as she heard knives and sickles thudding against the wooden door, gouging away at it.
“Your father,” Caxton gasped, watching the door jump and shake, “wants you something fierce.”
“But you’re not going to let him take me, are you?” Simon demanded. Caxton shook her head and just breathed for a second. “Kid, I can’t promise you anything. But I’ll do my best to protect you.”
Outside, in the hallway, she heard someone screaming. Not the high-?pitched squeal of a half-?dead, either. The scream cut off abruptly with the sound of gunshots and Caxton flinched. Troopers—good people, all—were fighting out there, maybe some of them were dying, and she couldn’t help them. She didn’t even have a sidearm, just a glorified nightstick.
The half-?deads outside slammed against the door with their weapons, their shoulders, the whole weight of their bodies. She could hear them out there urging each other on. She thought she could hear Vesta shouting orders. The door wasn’t going to last forever. “There are troopers out there, but I think they’re outnumbered. I don’t think we can just assume they’ll come rescue us.”
“We have to get out,” Simon said. His eyes were wide when he stared at her. “We have to get out of here. He’ll kill me. He’ll kill me!” There were more gunshots, and he yelped as if he’d been hit himself.
“Oh my God. Oh my God. I’m going to die, I’m going to die! I’m going to—”
Caxton slapped him hard across his face. She was a strong woman and she knocked him down, sent him sprawling across a ratty old armchair. He grabbed at his cheek and looked up at her, suddenly much calmer. “Thanks,” he said.
“You were getting really annoying,” Caxton said.
The hammering and gouging at the door stopped suddenly and Caxton heard a half-?dead outside whisper, “Get back, she’s coming.” Maybe Vesta Polder knew some kind of door-?opening spell, she thought, though in her experience Vesta’s talents had never before lent themselves to such mundane uses. Caxton moved away from the door in any case, her ASP baton up and ready. She glanced at Simon, who was quick to get behind her. The boy started to say something, but then the door twisted in its frame with a horrible groaning sound as its hinges were strained and finally snapped. The door disappeared, and the couch they’d shoved in front of it went flying into the room and slammed into a vending machine hard enough to make its lighted front crack and go dim. A moment later a vampire walked into the room.
Vampire Zero
Chapter 50.
Caxton swung her baton, but before it could connect it was wrenched painfully from her hand and thrown across the room. She could feel a blow coming—she could feel the cold, unnatural aura of the vampire moving toward her at high speed, and she tried to roll away from it, but her spine twisted in such a way to make her scream and suddenly she was on her back on the linoleum tiles, looking up at the fluorescent light fixtures.
The vampire had one slender foot on her throat. The pressure on her trachea made it impossible to cry out, but she could still breathe a little, a shallow whistling breath that left her with stars in her vision. She tried to look up at the vampire, tried to see who it could be. Not Urie Polder, she thought, please. Losing Vesta had been bad enough. Caxton didn’t have enough friends that she could afford to lose one more.
The vampire holding her down, however, was female. Thin, smaller than the usual blood-?sucker, with refined features that would have been beautiful if not for the jagged teeth deforming her lips. Caxton looked lower and saw she was dressed in some kind of sack or a loose-?fitting sheath dress made of white cotton and duct tape, stained down the front with a streak of clotted blood. It wasn’t a dress at all, she realized. It was the remains of a shroud.
“Raleigh?” Simon asked, cowering near where Caxton lay.
“Hello, Simon,” the vampire growled. “Long time no see.” Then she reached over and punched her brother in the side of the head. His eyes rolled up and he fell over, twitching and drooling a little.
“I didn’t kill him,” Raleigh said, looking down with red eyes into Caxton’s face. “I’m not evil. I just gave him a little concussion. I’m supposed to bring him to Daddy. He’ll be given the same choice we all were, and hopefully he’ll take the smart option. He’ll be easier to transport this way.”
Caxton tried to creak out some words, though she wasn’t sure what she meant to say.
“Sorry,” Raleigh said, and lifted her foot away from Caxton’s neck.