Vampire Zero (Laura Caxton, #3)(94)

“I’ve had time to broaden my view,” he said. “Alright.” He turned to face one of the half-?deads. “You, get some more chain. The rest of you, help him secure her to a timber.” He turned to Caxton again.

“You’re about to pass out, Trooper. There’s not enough oxygen down here to keep you awake. I’ll try to make your death painless—I owe you that much. After all, if it weren’t for you I wouldn’t have ever come this far.”

Caxton’s eyes went wide. He was right, of course. He had accepted the curse as a way to save her life. If she hadn’t needed his help so badly, he would never have become a vampire. Everything he’d done, everyone he’d killed, all that blood was on her hands. It was what had driven her to desperate tactics, and what had drawn her to Centralia—to find forgiveness for what she’d created. Now that drive for absolution was going to be her death. She thought carefully about what to say next. “You owe me—you said that before. That you owe me a great deal and you intend to pay me in full.”

“And so I have. I had plenty of chances to kill you before now, and plenty of reasons to do so. I held back for your sake. Honestly, if you hadn’t come here tonight, if you’d been smart enough to know when you were beaten, you could have lived. But now you’ve found my lair. You’ve threatened my family with violence. I think that wipes the slate clean. I’m going to save you just long enough to give my son a good meal. You’ll have a last chance to be useful. It’s the most noble death I can think of.”

She didn’t look him in the eye when she asked, “How about a last request?”

“Fair enough,” he answered after a long pause. “I’m not unreasonable,” he told her. “I’m not, no matter how many times your girlfriend said it, an *.”

She looked at him squarely. “You killed your own wife and your brother because you had to, to stay alive. You knew you couldn’t survive on your own. So you went after everyone you ever loved, maybe everyone you thought you could stand being around for eternity. You got Raleigh, and I don’t doubt you’ll convince Simon.”

“Yes,” Jameson said.

“I never asked you to like me,” Caxton said. “I don’t think you ever did. Maybe you respected me, just a little. Grudgingly. But Jameson, I don’t want to die.” She closed her eyes and let her body sag. All this talking was making her dizzy and light-?headed. She really should be conserving her oxygen. What she was about to say was almost certainly a waste of breath.

“I want to live,” she said, her eyes flashing open. “I want to live forever.”





Vampire Zero





Chapter 57.


Jameson stared at her, his red eyes wide. Then he opened his mouth, showing his rows of razor-?sharp teeth, and started to laugh.

Caxton couldn’t remember ever hearing him laugh while he was alive. Undead, his laughter was a harsh dry rasping sound that echoed off the stone walls.

She expected him to bat her down to the ground with one quick swipe, or maybe tear her apart and drink her blood on the spot. He didn’t. Instead he took a step back and looked her up and down, as if appraising her worthiness. She tried to think of something to add, some compelling argument why she would make a great vampire. She couldn’t think of any.

“No, Daddy,” Raleigh said, rushing past Caxton and nearly knocking her down. The girl tried to embrace Jameson, but he held her off, at arm’s distance. “No,” she said again. “It’s bad enough I have to spend eternity with Simon, but—her?”

Jameson looked down at his daughter. He hadn’t noticed what had happened when Raleigh ran past Caxton. Raleigh had been too upset to notice, herself. If the half-?deads saw, they were too disciplined to say anything.

Caxton’s Beretta had still been sticking out of the side of Raleigh’s ballistic vest, where she’d shoved it after firing off sixteen rounds. Caxton was a little surprised it hadn’t fallen out on the walk to the crypt. As weak and breathless as Caxton was, it had been easy enough to grab the pistol’s grip as Raleigh moved past her and draw it from its makeshift holster.

“It can just be you and me,” Raleigh sighed. “Forever. Why share our blood with her? Why—when she’s tried to kill you so many times? She would have burned me alive back there, at the police station.”

Caxton wasted a fraction of a second checking the safety. It was already off, because Raleigh had thought the gun was useless. It almost was. Caxton lifted the pistol two-?handed and drew a bead on Jameson’s trauma plate. She hesitated for another fraction of a second. She wasn’t sure if the bullets would actually penetrate the steel plate, and she would get only one chance. Raleigh, on the other hand, had her back turned to Caxton. There was no trauma plate on the back of her vest.

Caxton’s life was going to last just as long as it took one vampire or another to notice what she was doing. She didn’t have time to consider her next move, other than to think that leaving the world with one less vampire in it would be a good legacy. She steadied herself, held her breath, and squeezed the trigger. Jameson and Raleigh both screamed in surprise and rage. Raleigh’s arms went around her father’s neck and she slumped across his chest in the same instant that a hole blew open in the back of her vest, just between her spine and her left scapula. White vapor hissed out of the wound, spraying tiny fragments of Twaron fiber and splinters of bone.