Vampire Zero (Laura Caxton, #3)(88)

Caxton felt as if she’d been slapped across the face.

“I’ve been called in to work,” Clara said. “Fetlock called me into the HQ. It’s a slaughterhouse in here.”

“He took my badge,” Caxton blurted.

“Laura, listen to me. Very carefully.”

Tears swirled in Caxton’s vision. She pulled over on the side of the road because she couldn’t see well enough to drive. “I need to talk to you. For real.”

“I can’t right now. Fetlock’s coming down here any second and if he hears me talking to you we’re both in serious trouble. But first you need to know something. We’ve already started going over Vesta Polder’s body. Fetlock has me supervising his forensics team and taking pictures. They trust me now. Treat me like one of them. They didn’t find much yet, except some black powder on her clothes. I’m pretty sure it’s coal dust.”

“Okay,” Caxton said, clutching at her forehead. “I don’t know why that’s—”

“Coal dust. Vesta didn’t live anywhere near a coal mine. I suggested we go back and look at some of the old fibers. The Twaron and nylon from the motel, and the clothes he left at the convent. There were traces of coal dust on all of them. We think Jameson had coal dust on his hands when he killed Vesta Polder.”

Caxton tried to speak, but her throat was too thick with emotion. She choked down her tears, then said,

“I’m going to make things right between us. Right now I have to—you know what I have to do. But when I get back,” she said, thinking, if I come back, “I will make everything right. I love you.”

“I have to go now,” Clara said. “I’ll give you a call when I can talk.” She paused for a moment, then said,

“Same here,” and hung up.

Caxton put her phone down, then laid her forehead gently against the steering wheel. Her body convulsed with sobs that she fought back, sobs of grief for what she’d thrown away and the people she’d lost. Sobs of fear, too. True fear. Fear of what was still to come. Because as soon as Clara told her about the coal dust, she’d already put two and two together. She knew where the lair was.





Vampire Zero





Chapter 53.


A coal mine. That made sense. Vampires liked their lairs dark and quiet, and far away from human interference. A coal mine, an abandoned coal mine, would make the perfect spot. There were thousands of coal mines in Pennsylvania, however, and hundreds of them were abandoned. Caxton could never have checked them all even if she’d had unlimited time.

When she added what Carboy had told her, however, she could only think of one abandoned coal mine where flowers grew in the middle of winter.

She wanted to go right there, but it wouldn’t be that easy. She needed special equipment. Jameson had said humans couldn’t survive inside his lair, and he hadn’t been kidding. Getting that equipment was going to be a problem. What she needed was in ready supply at the HQ building, but she wouldn’t be welcome there—and Fetlock would watch her every move if she showed up, even if he didn’t already know what she’d done with Carboy. She thought about approaching a firehouse and trying to bluff her way into getting what she needed, but she knew there would be too many questions, and probably too many phone calls made.

In the end she was reduced to going shopping. There was a place in Harrisburg she knew, an army surplus store that stayed open late. She arrived just as they were closing, but she flashed her state police ID and the night manager nodded and let her in, locking the door behind her. She stared at the racks of camouflage clothing, let her gaze run across glass display cases full of butterfly knives and night-?vision goggles. She could use a pair of the latter, but she knew she couldn’t afford them. She was willing to go into debt—she’d lost so much already her credit rating didn’t feel terribly important—but there was a pretty tight limit on her Visa card.

The manager was a young guy in a plaid shirt and horn-?rimmed glasses. He sighed with impatience and asked her what he could help her with.

Caxton cleared her mind by rubbing at her face with both hands. Was she really going to do this? The lair was underground, probably full of carbon monoxide gas, and the temperatures down there could reach a thousand degrees. Nothing in the store could keep her alive through that. If she could just get close, though—close enough—

“I need a Nomex flash-?resistant suit,” she said. “Gloves, booties, the whole package. I need a face mask, too, and a hard hat. And a portable air supply, the longest-?lasting one you’ve got.”

The manager stared at her openmouthed. “You fighting a brush fire, ma’am?” he asked.

“Worse. I’m going into a coal mine fire.”

“Like the one in Centralia?”

Caxton gave him a weak smile. “Exactly like the one in Centralia. You have what I need?”

He shrugged and walked down an aisle, calling over his shoulder, “Is this going to be cash or credit?”

Fifteen minutes later she was back in the car, headed northeast. Toward the closest thing to hell you could find in Pennsylvania.

Centralia. Every kid in the Commonwealth knew about Centralia, about the fire under the town that had been burning since the sixties and still had enough fuel to continue to burn long after they, and their grandchildren, were dead. It was a place where the ground opened up and swallowed people and houses whole. It was a place where the earth was so hot underneath that flowers bloomed on the surface, even in the middle of winter.