“Did I say something wrong?” Clara asked, trying to sound innocent. “I was just asking about your parents because—”
“Hold on,” Hauser said. Her nose twitched. Vampire senses were sharper than those of human beings. Where blood was involved they were positively acute. Like a shark, a vampire could smell blood a mile away. “There’s something—I shouldn’t—”
Caxton flicked her wrist. Droplets of blood stained the foam rubber bars in front of her. A few of them sailed through the air and splattered the floor outside the cage. She flexed her hand a few more times and then brushed her palm against the bars, spreading even more blood all over them.
There was no apprehension in her, no fear that this wouldn’t work. It would definitely work. It would almost certainly get her killed, too. That was okay. She’d stopped believing she could end this neatly. She couldn’t see a lot of positive outcomes. But she would die trying, and that had to count for something.
Hauser padded over toward her, nose rummaging through the air. Her red eyes fixed on a spot of blood a few feet outside of Caxton’s cage.
“I cut myself,” Caxton said, her tone flat and emotionless.
“That was kind of stupid, bitch. It’s not like I’m going to come in there and bandage you up,” Hauser said. But she was still looking at the blood.
“I wonder what it tastes like,” Caxton said. “You know. If we’re going to be vampires. I wonder what it tastes like to you.”
Hauser seemed to recover herself a little. “Yeah. Well, you can lick it off the floor later. I’m supposed to sit at that desk and just watch you guys. Make sure you talk over Malvern’s offer real good.”
“I bet it tastes like—what? Wine? Maybe really good chocolate,” Caxton suggested. She hadn’t expected Hauser to put up this much resistance.
The vampire squatted down and put one white fingertip next to the blood spot. And just stared at it. Didn’t touch it. Didn’t move. When they wanted to, vampires could stand so still you’d think they were marble statues. They didn’t breathe. Their muscles never got stiff or tired.
“You don’t have to do this,” Clara shouted. “You can fight it.”
“Clara, please,” Caxton said, trying not to sound too angry. “Don’t. Not right now.”
“She’ll kill you on the spot,” Clara whispered. “Suck you dry!”
“No I won’t,” Hauser said. “The last one did that, Malvern tore her heart out while we watched. I ain’t stupid, you know? I may not be a genius, but—”
She stopped talking in midsentence as if something had interrupted her train of thought. Then she trailed her finger through the cooling spot of blood. Lifted it carefully to her face and sniffed at it.
Then she licked her fingertip. And her eyelids drifted shut.
For a while there was no sound in the room. No one moved or spoke. Caxton held her breath. Then, when the vampire didn’t open her eyes again, she said, “Look. I got it all over these bars. I kind of made a mess.”
The eyelids snapped open. The red eyes were burning.
For a vampire the first taste of blood was like a junkie’s first fix of heroin. It would never taste as good as that first time. It would never be so clean, and pure, and fulfilling. It took them places, took them to dark new worlds that were theirs to explore. Places human beings couldn’t go.
It made them want more.
Endlessly more.
Hauser attacked the cage with a sudden savagery that had Caxton reeling backward. She felt her bad arm hit the side of the cage and she winced in pain, but her brain wouldn’t let her feel much. It was too busy overloading her body with adrenaline. Getting her ready to run. But there was no place to run. The cage bars bent inward and snapped as Hauser licked and tore at them, tearing the foam rubber to crumbs, smashing through the lock on the cage’s door.
Caxton had been careful to smear as much blood as she could spare on that lock.