“Angus, get back,” Caxton called, grabbing for her Beretta and jumping out of her chair. The old man was well ahead of her, closing quickly with the half-?dead.
“Don’t you worry, young lady. I can handle this sort.” The half-?dead knelt on the asphalt, down on all fours as if it was too weak to stand. Angus grabbed at the creature’s arm and yanked it painfully up until it was standing on its feet. “You said you’d call on me at midnight. It ain’t time yet!”
Caxton moved quickly, her weapon down and pointed at the ground next to her feet. The half-?dead wasn’t armed and it seemed barely capable of standing—in fact, it was tottering back and forth as if it would fall as soon as Angus let it go. That didn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous. Half-?deads were the victims of vampires, drained of their blood and then raised from the dead. They were nasty little creatures, spiteful and cruel and lacking all the human qualities they’d had in life. The curse that animated them corrupted their flesh as much as it did their souls; a half-?dead’s body started to rot and fall apart almost instantly, and it was rare that one of them could last more than ten days before disintegrating completely. This one looked at least a week old and smelled terrible, even in the cold night air. Weak as it might be, however, it could bite Angus and give him a nasty infection, if nothing worse.
“Let him go and stand back,” Caxton ordered, but Angus acted as if he hadn’t heard her.
“Twenty-?four hours, you said,” he told the thing. “You’re early!”
She had another interest in the half-?dead, beyond protecting Angus. It took a vampire to raise a half-?dead—which meant Jameson Arkeley had done it. That meant all kinds of things, some of which were more pleasant to think of than others. It meant Arkeley had killed a human being, proof positive that he had gone over to the darkness. If Caxton could keep the half-?dead from falling apart for a little while, though, it could also mean a real break in the case. The half-?dead might know the location of Jameson’s lair.
She could interrogate it. She could intimidate it into telling her everything it knew. As long as Angus didn’t finish it off first. She started to raise her weapon, planning to point it at Angus if he didn’t start complying with her orders.
The half-?dead spoke, though, and Caxton froze in her tracks.
“My master grows impatient,” it creaked. Its voice was high and unnatural, like the sound a nail makes when pulled out of a rotten piece of wood. “He has offered you a gift, and you have failed to accept. You know what the alternative is. What say you, Angus Arkeley?”
“How about this?” the old man replied, and slashed the half-?dead across the face with his hunting knife. The half-?dead screamed and dropped to the pavement. Angus kicked it viciously. “You like the sound of that? My answer is no, you son of a bitch. He can ask a million times and it’ll always be no.”
“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—”