Vampire Zero (Laura Caxton, #3)(99)

She was almost ready for him. She had her pistol cradled between her two nonfunctional hands. She had no more bullets, but she had the flashlight attachment, and she flicked it on. His eyes had been adapted to the total gloom of the coal mine. They were extremely sensitive to light even at the best of times. He roared and threw an arm across his eyes, but the flashlight was just an annoyance to him—it couldn’t really hurt him. He blinked a few times and then looked back at her, better adapted now to handle the light.

With her right thumb, though it cost her pain, she turned a dial on the flashlight attachment, then flicked another switch. The red dot of the laser sight jumped across the black fabric of his vest. She had turned it up to its full intensity, to a power level where it could cut through fog or smoke and light up a target hundreds of yards away.

She brought the gun up and raked the laser across his eyes like a knife. He howled and screamed and tore at his eye sockets with his claws. His eyes bubbled and smoked and white jelly ran down his cheeks.

It was far more than she’d hoped for. Even at full strength the laser would have barely dazzled a human’s eyes—at most it might have temporarily blinded a human being and left bright afterimages swirling in his vision.

Vampires, however, were creatures of the night, cursed never to see the bright strong light of the sun as long as they lived. Their eyes were not meant for that kind of abuse. Jameson swung out with his left arm and his fingerless hand knocked the gun right out of her weak grip. That was fine—it had served its purpose. Caxton got up on her feet and wobbled into the middle of the gallery, facing him as he clawed the air looking for her.

She wasn’t sure if he could still see her blood or not. He could have seen it in total darkness, and she thought maybe he didn’t need eyes to see the blood surging through her veins. To help him find his way, she threw her right hand toward him again and let her blood splatter on the ground, forming a trail of droplets he could certainly smell.

Then she turned and ran up the gallery, the way she’d come, moving as fast as she could. He came after her, of course. He wanted nothing now but to drink her blood. His son was forgotten, the goal of recruiting new vampires was forgotten, everything but the blood was gone. He came sniffing after it, his hands out in front of him, his eyes already healing in his skull, white smoke writhing in his eye sockets, taking on the shape of new eyeballs to see her with.

They didn’t have far to go. She danced backward until she felt the sawhorse smack the back of her thighs, and then she looked over her shoulder and saw the fissure gaping open behind her. The fissure that led straight down into the mine fire that burned at a thousand degrees Fahrenheit.

“Come and get me,” Caxton grunted.

The vampire complied. He ran at her as fast as a charging horse. She dashed aside at the last moment, and he went flying, shattering the sawhorse into fragments as he passed right through it. One second he was running past her and the next he was gone.

She staggered to the edge of the fissure. It would hurt to look down there, but she had to know. Sparks fluttered against her face, caught and smoldered in her hair as she stared down into the crack. He was hanging by the fingers of his good hand to the side of the fissure, his bare feet dangling over the burning coal. His fingerless left hand slapped at the wall impotently, unable to get a grip. How far down was it—thirty feet? A hundred? She couldn’t tell. His red eyes stared up at her and in them she saw naked desire. Not for her soul, but for her blood. He wanted her blood so badly that he couldn’t think anymore, couldn’t realize what he was doing. He reached for her, forgetting his other hand couldn’t hold him—

—and then he fell, straight downward, into the coal fire. He did not scream. When he hit the flames they parted to swallow him like the waters of a river of fire, and then he disappeared from view. It was hot enough down there to burn him to cinders in moments, she knew. Hot enough to burn even the tough muscle of his heart. He was dead. Jameson was dead, she thought, but no—he hadn’t been Jameson at the end. She hadn’t killed Jameson. She’d just killed one more vampire. It was over.





Vampire Zero





Chapter 60.


Nothing was over.

She followed the passage back by the reflected light of the fissure, as far as it would take her. Then she got down on her hands and knees and crawled around in the dust until she found her gun. She tried turning on the flashlight, but the lens had cracked when Jameson batted it out of her hands. Jameson—whose grave would remain forever empty.

Caxton let herself cry for a while. Then she started to actually think about how she would get back to the lighted corridor. It wasn’t going to be easy, she thought. She couldn’t remember how many turns the gallery went through. She couldn’t remember if there were side passages she might accidentally enter and got lost within. She started to really worry. Her oxygen supply was low. If she couldn’t find the lighted corridor before it ran out, if she just wandered until she couldn’t breathe, until she had to lie down and go to sleep—

Her feet must have remembered the way. Before she knew it she was back at the central junction chamber, where Simon still lay chained to a timber. Where Raleigh’s body lay where it had fallen. Where four coffins waited for her inspection.

First things first.

Caxton took off her mask and tried not to breathe too much smoke. She touched the mask to Simon’s face and let him breathe in the oxygen until he started to stir, until his eyelids fluttered weakly open. It wasn’t easy, with two bad hands, but she freed him from his chains. She let him have the oxygen—he’d been breathing the smoke a lot longer than she had. He sank to the floor, not even strong enough to thank her.