She stooped down to touch the throat of the woman who had opened her cell door. There was a pulse in her neck, but it was faint. The half-dead had really done a number on her, cutting her open from the armpit down to the hip and probably opening arteries and veins all the way down. The woman needed a lot more than first aid, and Caxton wasn’t sure she could be saved even by a team of paramedics. As much as she owed the woman, whose name she didn’t even know, there were other people she could help more. People she could save.
From inside a cell a few doors down Caxton heard a woman screaming and begging for her life. A trickle of blood rolled out through the open door and glistened on the concrete floor of the SHU. Caxton kicked off her slippers—they made a slip-slap noise when she walked—and padded barefoot over to the open door. It would be suicide to barge in and try to save the women inside. Half-deads weren’t very smart, or strong, or fast. But with its hunting knife and Caxton’s limited training in unarmed self-defense, this half-dead wouldn’t have to be any of those things to hurt her, and badly, if she rushed it. So she leaned up against the wall next to the door, flattening herself against it as tightly as possible, and cleared her throat noisily.
The whimpering moans inside the cell didn’t stop, but she heard the scrape of a boot heel against the floor. The half-dead had heard her and was turning around to see what the noise meant.
It could choose to be stupid, or to be smart. If it was stupid it would come running out with its knife held up high. It would trip over her outstretched ankle and fall face forward onto the floor, losing its grip on the knife in the process. Then she could grab the knife and kill it before it could even start getting back up.
If it was smart, it would stay exactly where it was, and wait for her to come to it.
Caxton could hear her heart beating in her ears. She counted thirty heartbeats before she decided it had done the smart thing. Then she cursed to herself.
It heard that as well. “Is that you, Laura? Are you playing a little game with me? Why don’t you come in and say hi? I’m not supposed to kill you, you must know that. Miss Malvern just wants to talk.”
Caxton bit her lower lip. The half-dead might be lying, but she knew that was just wishful thinking. Malvern was behind the attack on the prison, of course. Justinia Malvern, the last living vampire in Pennsylvania. She and Caxton had a long history. Malvern had been making plans to pillage and destroy the good people of the Commonwealth for nearly a century and a half. In that time she’d created a legion of new vampires, whole armies of them, to aid her. For the last few of those years Caxton had been the one who foiled all her plans and slaughtered all her vampiric descendants. She’d never quite managed to track down Malvern herself, and now it sounded like she was going to pay for that failure.
Maybe Malvern wanted to torture her to death. Caxton knew the vampire wouldn’t let her die quickly, not if she could help it. Not if she could watch. There were other possibilities, too. Malvern had always wanted to turn Caxton into a vampire. It would be a great coup, and it would turn her greatest enemy into a valuable ally. More than once Malvern had made the offer, and every time Caxton had turned her down. Maybe the whole prison was suffering just so Caxton could have another chance to say no. Or maybe Malvern had something else in mind entirely, some brilliant but twisted scheme that involved Caxton in some diabolical way she couldn’t imagine.
Regardless, the last thing she wanted was to see Malvern just then. Not until she had some serious firepower to back her up.
“I don’t have a lot to say to her at the moment,” Caxton told the half-dead. “But if you come out of there right now, I’ll talk to you.”
The half-dead cackled.
“I’ll take it that’s a no,” Caxton said.
It might have planned on replying, but before it could speak again she was inside the cell. She kept low but moved fast, rushing forward to try to knock it down, her eyes darting from side to side, looking for where the knife might be.
Instead she just saw the cell’s two inmates. They weren’t begging for mercy anymore, because both of them were dead, locked in a final embrace and covered in each other’s blood.