Then she looked up.
The lockers didn’t go all the way up to the ceiling—there was a foot and a half of open space up there.
The ceiling of the locker was nothing more than a thin sheet of chicken wire. The wire was higher up than she could reach, but maybe—maybe—she could jump up and grab it.
Shoving her Beretta in her holster—safety on, of course—she rubbed her hands together, then made a tentative leap. Her fingertips brushed the wire, but she couldn’t get a grip. She tried again and missed it altogether. Third time’s the charm, she promised herself, and bent deep from the knees.
The fingers of her left hand slipped through the wire. She closed her fist instantly as she fell back—and pulled the wire back down with her. The wire tore the skin of her fingers until they were slick with blood, and the noise was deafening as the wire shrieked and tore under her weight, but she was left with a hole directly above her that she could probably wriggle through. She grabbed the dangling wire with her other hand and started to pull herself up, a handful at a time. It felt like her fingers were being cut to ribbons, but she had no choice—she needed to get out.
She froze as she heard the vampire out in the hall. “What are you doing in there?” he asked, half of a chuckle in his voice. The voice confused her. It sounded different, somehow, from the voice on the recording that had lured her to the facility. Less guttural, less—inhuman.
She didn’t bother to answer. She pulled herself upward, hauling herself hand over hand until she was perched on the top of the locker’s side wall. She could look down the other side into the locker to her right. Cardboard boxes, a pair of skis, plastic milk crates full of old vinyl records filled the narrow space.
From where she was perched she could slip down into the corridor, though the vampire was waiting for her there, alerted by all the noise she’d made. Vampires had far better reaction time and reflexes than human beings. Trying to pounce on one from above was probably suicide.
Not that she had much choice. She leaned out just a little and looked down into the corridor. She saw the white bald head of the vampire below her. He was leaning up against the door of the empty locker, one triangular ear pressed up against it, one long pawlike hand splayed against the white metal.
She drew her weapon—and leapt. With as little thought as that. She landed hard on his shoulders and must have caught him off balance, because he went sprawling down on the floor on his back with her on top. She flipped off her safety and fired in one fluid motion, not even taking the time to aim. Her bullet blew open the skin of his shoulder and sent bone chips flying, and realizing her mistake, realizing she’d missed his heart, she brought her arm back and pistol-whipped him across the mouth.
His fangs snapped and shattered and flew away from the blow. He started gagging and coughing and then he spat out the broken fangs, revealing round white normal teeth below them. She stared wildly into his blue eyes, and saw the shiny gloss of stubble on the top of his head.
“Oh, shit,” she said. She grabbed one of his triangular ears and yanked it off. It was made of foam rubber.
Chapter 3.
Outside a SWAT team crouched in the snow, high-powered rifles leveled at the glass doors of the lobby. Blue and red lights flashed in Caxton’s eyes and she blinked them away. “Move, you idiot,” she said, and shoved the subject forward, out into the street. He whimpered as the broken bones in his shoulder rubbed against each other. The SWAT team relaxed visibly when they saw the handcuffs binding his arms together, but they didn’t stand down completely until she gave the order.
“Glauer,” she called, and the big cop came running around from the back, where he’d still been watching the fire exit. Good soldier, she thought. “Glauer, call an ambulance. This one’s wounded.”
He stared at her in total incomprehension. The job of the SSU wasn’t to arrest vampires, and it certainly wasn’t to get them medical attention. It was to exterminate them.
“He’s a wannabe,” she explained. She tore off the subject’s other rubber ear. Revealed beneath was a round, normal, flesh-colored human ear. She had to admit the subject had done a good job of faking it.
In poor light conditions even she hadn’t been able to tell the difference between this kid and a real vampire.
Of course, she should have been able to. Real vampires were unnatural creatures. If you got near them you felt how cold their bodies were. The hair on the backs of your arms stood up. They had a distinctive, bestial smell. There was no way for the wannabe to fake that, and if she had kept her wits about her she would have noticed. She had been so desperate to find Arkeley, to finish her job, that she had made a bad mistake. What if she had killed him? What if she had pumped three shots into his heart, just on principle?
The wannabe had killed two people and then discharged a firearm toward a police officer conducting a criminal investigation. Had she killed him, that would have been enough to keep her out of jail. It was close to the textbook definition of permissible use of force, but even if the state police’s internal investigation cleared her, it couldn’t shield her from a civil action if the kid’s family decided she’d acted excessively.
The special subjects unit was brand new. It couldn’t survive lawsuits—or dumb mistakes like this—and without the SSU the people of Pennsylvania would be at risk. People everywhere would be at risk. She couldn’t afford to screw up that way.
Glauer brought his car around, a marked patrol unit with the SSU acronym painted on its hood. It was their only official car. Caxton helped shove the wannabe into the back, pushing his head down so he didn’t smack it on the doorjamb. He could sit there until the ambulance arrived.
She’d already got a field dressing on his wounded shoulder. A bad bruise had lifted on his lower lip where she’d pistol-whipped him, but she couldn’t do much for that. “Take these,” she told Glauer. She handed him the wannabe’s shotgun and the bloody hunting knife she’d taken off his belt. She was willing to guess he’d used the knife on the two bodies in the lobby. It had a nasty serrated edge he could have used to saw off the janitor’s arm. She shook her head in disgust and stared down at her hands. They were covered in blood and white greasepaint. She didn’t want to wipe them on her pants—her best pair of work pants—so she grabbed up handfuls of snow off the ground and scrubbed them together.
“What’s your name?” Glauer asked. He was squatting next to the subject, talking through the open door of the cruiser. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. Is there anybody you want us to call?”
Caxton stared at her officer as if he was crazy. Then she realized that he was just trying to calm the subject down. One reason Caxton needed Glauer on her team was for just this—for talking to people who were scared and in pain. Caxton had never been much of a people person herself.
“Rexroth,” the wannabe said.
“You have a first name? Or is that it?” Glauer asked.
Caxton leaned against the side of the cruiser and closed her eyes. It would be a long wait until the ambulance arrived, and even then she wouldn’t be done with this guy. What a waste of time.
“Make sure he’s aware of his rights,” she said, just by reflex.
Glauer stayed focused on the subject, though. “What were you hoping would happen tonight?”
Rexroth—almost certainly an alias, she decided—started crying. He couldn’t wipe the tears and snot off his face with his hands cuffed behind him, so they gathered in oily beads on his painted face. “I was supposed to die. She was supposed to kill me.”