“Get back,” Caxton commanded. “Leave it alone!”
Already drawing his foot back for another vicious kick, Angus turned to glare at her, his eyes traveling down her arms to the pistol in her hands. “Shee-yit,” he said. White foaming spittle flecked his lips and chin. “I can take care of this. You weren’t supposed to get involved.”
“That thing is a vampire’s servant. That makes it my responsibility. Now get back,” she said, as calmly as she could. Her heart was thudding in her chest.
Angus raised his hands, holding up the knife. No blood marked the shiny blade, just some scaly bits of gray flesh. “You got me outgunned, I guess,” he said. “But this is my trouble.” His foot came down and slammed into the half-dead’s side, making it choke and sputter.
“Step back. You’ve been lying to me, haven’t you? You had some kind of contact with Jameson. Is that right?”
Angus grinned at her as he took a step backward. “I said I hain’t seen or talked to Jameson in twenty years, and that’s the truth. Still haven’t. I seen this fellow last night, said he was sent by my brother. Said he had a message for me, a kind of a deal, and I had twenty-four hours to think it over. He also knew you’d be around asking questions. Said if I told you anything it would be the death of me.”
“I can protect you. If I’d known—I could have taken you somewhere safe,” Caxton said, shaking her head. She glanced down at the half-dead and saw it wasn’t moving.
“A man takes care of his own. I didn’t expect you to understand. Jameson’s my brother, and that makes it my job to kill him—to—”
Angus’ eyes moved to stare at the half-dead’s car. Caxton thought it might be a trick—a ruse to break her concentration and let him get another kick in. Stepping backward slowly, she turned to glance at what he was looking at.
Inside the car a massive dark shape stirred. A pair of red eyes glared out of the darkened backseat.
Caxton started to swing her weapon around, to train it on the car, but she was just too slow. The far side rear door exploded outwards and a black-and-white blur bounced across the black pavement toward Angus. It slowed down enough to grab him around the waist, and in that moment she saw exactly what she expected to see.
It was Jameson Arkeley, the vampire. He wore a black shirt and pants, but his feet were bare. His skin had lost all pigmentation and all its hair, even his eyelashes. His triangular ears, his red eyes, and his mouth full of ugly teeth couldn’t hide the resemblance he still bore to his brother. Yet where Angus’ face showed the lines of age and care, Jameson’s features were smooth and unblemished. Only his left hand was less than perfect. It was missing all its fingers. He’d been maimed when he was still alive, and even his curse couldn’t grow them back.
His red eyes stared right at her. She felt like a cold breeze blew right through the chambers of her skull and she heard his voice—his very human voice—calling her name, though his mouth didn’t move. Her arms fell slack at her sides and her eyelids started to droop. Caxton knew exactly what was happening.
She’d felt like this before, far too many times for comfort. He was hypnotizing her. Freezing her in place.
She had a charm on a thong around her neck, a spiral of silver metal, a talisman Vesta Polder had given her to allow her to break that kind of spell. She tried to reach for it even as she felt it growing warm against her clavicle, but her hand felt resistance as if it were moving through gelatin. Jameson had plenty of time to kill her before she could grab the charm and regain control of her own body.
Yet that didn’t seem to be what he wanted. His eyes broke with hers and suddenly he was gone from her head. She reached up and grabbed the charm through her shirt, felt its heat scorch her fingers, but she was already free. Her other hand, her gun hand, came up and she aimed automatically at his heart.
Too slow, still too slow. He was moving again, moving faster than she could track. She dropped to one knee to improve her aim and tried to get a bead on his back, even knowing that the chances of shooting him through the heart like that were slim to none. Worse, he had Angus dangling over his shoulder and she couldn’t risk shooting the living brother, for many reasons.
“Freeze,” she shouted, but she could hear him laughing in her mind, a drawn-out evil chuckle that faded as his hypnotic hold on her dissipated altogether.
She jumped back up to her feet and gave chase but didn’t get very far. Jameson had run right into the motel, kicking open the door to Angus’ room. He ducked inside with his brother still in tow. The door swung shut behind him and cut him off from view.
Caxton raced to the door and threw herself against the wall just to the left of it. If Jameson came exploding back out the way he’d gone in she didn’t want to get in his way. She raised her weapon to shoulder height and tried to breathe, tried to work out what to do next.
Jameson Arkeley, vampire hunter, would have known without thinking. Did you rush in and hope for the best? Did you wait outside for the vampire to come back out? He wouldn’t have even had to ask himself the question. Yet Caxton couldn’t decide that quickly. If she rushed the door she could be running right into a trap. Vampires loved setting traps. Jameson could be waiting inside ready to grab her and tear her to pieces before she even saw him. Yet if she waited him out—who knew what he would do to Angus?
Her duty, she decided, was to the living brother. If she had any chance of saving him she needed to move fast. Already she’d wasted valuable seconds. Weapon at the ready, she launched herself at the door, then rolled into the room with her head down and scrambled behind the bed. Raising just her eyes and hands over the jungle print bedspread, she swung her Beretta back and forth, covering the room.
It was empty—but the door to the bathroom was open. No light burned inside and she could see nothing but shadows. She rolled across the bed and rushed, shoulder first, through the open doorway. She pivoted on her heel, covering the toilet, the plastic sink, the pebbled-glass shower door. When nothing tried to kill her instantly she reached out with her left hand and switched on the lights.
The shower door was painted with blood.
Chapter 11.
“Oh, God, no—not your own brother,” Caxton sighed. She hesitated a second, not really wanting to know, but then she slid back the shower door. It slid back all too easily, its track slick with wet blood.
More blood half-filled the tub, almost but not quite submerging the body of Angus Arkeley. The old man sprawled in an ungainly mess across the porcelain, one arm folded under his body, the other reaching up toward the soap dish. His eyes were very wide and blood still bubbled from a massive wound at his throat.
Protocol demanded she call 911, and she did—though she knew Angus would die before help could arrive. “I have a man down in room four,” she told the dispatcher, once she’d provided her credentials and her location. “I’m looking at massive blood loss from deep lacerations to the neck. I need an ambulance right away and every officer you can send.” Clicking her phone shut, she grabbed up a stiff white towel. She shoved it into the wound, but the blood surged out from under it, coming in thick gouts so fresh they hadn’t begun to clot.
Angus’ eyes rolled slowly down, trying to fasten on Caxton’s face. There was no emotion there. The old man lacked the strength to even beg for help. Caxton thought of questioning him but knew he couldn’t reply. He had told her enough already, she thought, even though he’d lied to her.
As bad as Angus’ condition might be, she had another Arkeley to worry about.
She looked up, around the bathroom. There was no sign of Jameson. She had read old folktales about vampires who could slip through the crack between a door and its frame, but she knew better. Jameson was a big guy and there was nowhere he could hide in the small room. She looked up and saw a window above the toilet. It was open, letting cold night air blast inside. It looked too small for Jameson to have wriggled out of—yet she knew he had. The metal frame of the window was buckled outward. With enough strength and determination and a complete disinterest in physical pain (all of which any vampire possessed), she figured he could have just made it through. She was tempted to jump up and follow him the same way, yet first she spared another glance down at Angus in the bathtub.