She grabbed up her cell phone out of her pocket. Running as fast as she was, she couldn’t check the screen to see if she had any bars or not. She flipped it open anyway and hit the send key. Hours earlier she’d typed in the appropriate number and now the phone dialed automatically. Pressing it against her ear, she heard a single thready ring, the atmosphere tearing at her signal with invisible fingers. A second ring and then someone picked up on the other end.
“Now,” she said, and light blasted through the gateway, dozens of headlights on high beam coming on all at once. If everything had gone according to plan there would be as many as ten patrol cruisers sitting out there, all of them loaded with local cops. After the disaster at Bellefonte she’d been leery of actually bringing them into the convent, but they could serve her just fine out there beyond the gate. The light hit Jameson like an artillery barrage. He threw his arms up across his face and dropped to his knees in the snow, hurt far worse by car headlights than by all the bullets she’d wasted on him. He was a nocturnal creature and his eyes were meant for night vision. They couldn’t handle all that light. Slowly he rose to his feet again, turning away from the gate, his face clutched in his hands.
“There’s no escape that way,” Caxton shouted. “And I have guys waiting at the creek if you try to go that way.” She lined up a shot on his back. “I’m willing to give you a chance to surrender.”
Jameson rose to his full height, still rubbing at his eyes with his hands. Behind him she could see cops milling about, poking rifle barrels through the gate, lining up shots. She didn’t know if they would have any more luck than she had, but there was one way to find out.
He started to laugh then. Maybe it was the laughter of a man who knows there’s no way out, but she didn’t think so. She lifted the phone to her lips and said, “Fire at will.”
Vampire Zero
Chapter 31.
The rifles cracked and spat fire and filled the air with whizzing bullets, but Jameson was already on the move. He leapt out of the light and landed on all fours like a cat on the shadowy snow, then swiveled around and jumped again as the rifles tracked him. Caxton ran out of the field of fire, terrified that she might be hit by a stray shot from one of the police guns.
She could still hear the vampire laughing, a cold chuckle that rattled around inside her head like a dried pea in a cup. She jammed her fingers in her ears, which helped with the noise from the rifles but didn’t quiet the laughter at all.
Moving faster than she’d ever seen a vampire move before, Jameson crouched low and dashed behind a statue of the Virgin Mary. A rifle shot took off part of her wimple in a puff of obliterated masonry, but already Jameson was moving on. A row of weathered headstones was his next cover, and she could just see his dark clothes in reverse silhouette against the faintly glowing snow as he pressed his back against one of the stones. For a moment he didn’t move at all, or no—his good hand was moving, working at his belt. Had he brought some weapon, a firearm, with which to fight back? She’d never seen a real vampire with a gun before. They didn’t need them. Maybe that was just hubris on their part, however. Maybe Jameson had decided to buck the trend.
It wasn’t a gun he pulled out, though, as she watched. It was the belt of his pants. He whirled it around for a moment, then flung it into the air. The rifles tracked it and one or two of the cops took a shot—but already Jameson was moving in the other direction.
“Keep it together,” she shouted into her phone. “Don’t get distracted.”
It was hard for her to follow her own advice, however. Ducking behind a massive boulder, Jameson nearly got away from her as he threw one of his shoes to the left and the other to the right. She tried to keep her weapon pointed at him, but the double feint dragged her attention away for a split second. In that time Jameson managed to duckwalk all the way to a massive fountain in the middle of the lawn. She could just make out the curve of his back behind the fountain. His body writhed like a snake and she wondered if maybe he’d been hit. That was probably too much to hope for, and anyway if he’d been hit anywhere but directly in the heart it would only take him seconds to regenerate. With Violet’s blood flowing through his veins he would be nearly impervious to harm.
“Come on,” she said, urging him to move again, to expose himself for just a second. Instead he seemed to relax, his body sagging to the snow. “Come on. You can’t stay there forever.”
He didn’t move at all. The rifles had fallen silent, as no target presented itself. She thought about telling the cops to move in, but she knew that would just put them at risk. Assaulting the fountain was up to her.
“Hold your fire,” she said into her phone. Then she shoved it in her pocket, the call still connected in case she needed to issue another order. Keeping low, trying not to expose herself too much, Caxton moved step by step closer to the fountain.