“Do you know how hard it is to eat nothing for three whole weeks?” Raleigh asked, in a very small voice.
“Come on,” Caxton said. She’d had enough of the girls’ after-?hours hijinks. “We’re going back to your room. You’re going to sleep there all night if I have to sit on you.” She grabbed Raleigh’s arm, not too roughly, and dragged her up to her feet.
The girl didn’t pull away from her as Caxton marched the two of them through the dining hall and back toward the main stairwell. Just outside the entrance hall, however, Raleigh grabbbed Caxton’s arm very tightly and shook her head.
“Did you hear something?” Caxton asked. When she shut up and listened for a second, she heard it, too.
“What is that?” The sound changed to a kind of pathetic gagging and hissing that didn’t sound like an animal at all.
Caxton pushed open the door to the main hall and pointed her flashlight beam through, a narrow cone of light spearing through the darkness. It lit up Violet, who was slumped across the bottom steps of the stairway, her arms up in the air as if she were fending off a brutal attack. Caxton swiveled her light to the side a little—and saw Jameson Arkeley’s red eyes burn brighter than the room’s candles as he crouched over the silent girl.
Vampire Zero
Chapter 30.
Caxton raised her weapon and fired right at Jameson’s heart. The shot tore open his black shirt, just a few inches off. The vampire spun around and glared at her, but with her free hand she was already reaching for the amulet around her neck. It felt warm in her hand, which meant it was working. On the stairs Violet writhed and pushed herself up a step. Her face was contorted by fear and her hands were clutching at nothing.
Caxton fired again, and this time hit her target. The bullet clanged off his chest and spun away into the darkness. How was it possible? Jameson’s body curled up like a caterpillar in a fire, but only for an instant. He straightened up quickly—and then he was on her. It was that fast. She felt a cold wind blowing toward her and then she was on the floor with the vampire on top of her, pinning down her gun hand, his teeth pressing against her cheek. He felt cold and wrong and he stank of death. His weight pressed down on her wrist and the tendons there bent and twisted. Her fingers spasmed and then flew outward and her weapon fell away. He snatched it up and threw it into the darkness. He held her there silently while she struggled. He outweighed her by a considerable margin, but it was his strength that truly held her—she might as well have fought off a stone statue. Clamping her eyes shut, she turned her face to the floor and tried to get her free arm up to protect her eyes, but he just grabbed her wrist and smashed it painfully against the flagstones. Her flashlight rolled away across the floor. She could hear Violet gasping and choking on the stairs. She could hear her own breath pushing in and out of her chest. She could hear her heart beating in her throat. Jameson was as silent as a tomb. Then he pulled back a fraction of an inch. Enough to let her roll over on her side. Not enough to get her legs underneath her. “I warned you off,” he said, “but you wouldn’t listen. There’s part of me that still doesn’t want to kill you. Do you believe that?”
She didn’t answer—couldn’t. But then he shook her violently.
“Yes,” she managed to exhale.
“That part,” he went on, “gets smaller every night. The other part of me, the curse, gets stronger. Right now it’s telling me to tear open your carotid artery. To lap at your blood. I can imagine how good that would feel. How good it would taste. It would solve some problems, too. It would make my task easier.”
He was trying to convince himself to kill her, she realized. He was psyching himself up. She had to think of something fast.
“You did this to save me,” she tried. “You took the curse to save my life. If you kill me now that sacrifice means nothing.”
“I spared your life once, at the motel. Maybe that makes us even.”
She shook her head from side to side. “And what about at your wife’s house? You left seven half-?deads to kill me.”