“Now,” the older woman said, “he sees in it an opportunity.” Then she lifted her veil. Beneath it the skin of her face was torn and pink, hanging away from her features in grisly strips. She reached up into one sleeve of her dress and pulled out a long knife, honed and resharpened so many times that the blade was thin and crooked.
“Forgive me!” Vesta screamed, even as behind her the doors of the new cars flew open and more half-?deads spilled out on the pavement. There were dozens of them—Caxton didn’t have time to get an accurate count. She was too busy dodging the knife that came whistling for her throat. Vesta was a tall woman with a long reach. Caxton had to roll away from the swing, going down on one knee and throwing her head back. It was a lousy position from which to counterattack, and she didn’t get the chance. Her brain, running purely on reflex, sent a signal down her arm, a signal it had sent a thousand times before. Always before the signal had instructed her hand to slap a certain place on her hip and close its fingers around the grip of her pistol.
The pistol wasn’t there. Caxton knew that consciously, but her conscious mind was still trying to work out what was happening. Her hand closed pointlessly around the place where the gun should have been, and she wasted another fraction of a second.
“Protect my daughter and my man! Please!” Vesta screamed, and the knife thrust deep into the fabric of Caxton’s winter coat. The edge hissed along Caxton’s skin and she felt hot wet blood roll down her arm. Behind Vesta the other half-?deads were streaming up toward the building. They were all armed, with knives and sickles. What had Jameson done? It looked like he’d slaughtered half the population of the state and drafted them to his service.
Caxton had to get away. She had a few weapons on her belt, but none of them would let her get control of this mob. Maybe, though, they could give her a chance to get back on her feet. Vesta raised her knife high, flipped it in her hand and brought it down blade first, clearly intending to skewer Caxton with it. Caxton twisted away from the blow—then came up fast, her arm swinging around, her canister of pepper spray clutched in her fist.
She pushed down on the button on top of the can and foaming spray splashed across Vesta’s eyes. Vesta threw up her knife arm across her ravaged face, exactly as Caxton had known she would—it was the inevitable reaction to being sprayed. They taught you that at the academy. It seemed even death couldn’t break that primitive instinct.
Caxton didn’t waste time following through on her attack. She dropped the can of spray and shoved both of her hands down onto the cold concrete, shoved herself bodily upward until she was half upright, half bent over. It got her feet underneath her enough that she could run. She did not look back as she dashed through the doors of the HQ building, screaming for help.
Simon, she thought. Vesta had come for Simon—the last remaining member of the Arkeley family, the last one alive. The last one Jameson could hope to recruit. She had to find Simon, she had to get him out of the building, get him to safety.
“Somebody,” she shouted, “anybody—lock those doors!”
But it was too late. The half-?deads were already inside.
Vampire Zero
Chapter 49.
Caxton raced down the hallway, looking for help. She couldn’t find any. The wardroom was empty—she took one look inside and hurried past. Where had everybody gone? For a bad, breathless moment she thought maybe all the troopers who normally hung around the HQ were dead—or worse, that she had been betrayed somehow, and they had left her to her fate once Fetlock had dismissed her in their presence.