23 Hours: A Vengeful Vampire Tale

16.

Franklin took off his sunglasses. The skin around his eyes was mostly gone, torn away by his own nails. If she’d had any doubts before, she was certain now—he was a half-dead. Malvern must have ordered him not to scratch his own face off, so that he could fit in better with the living people in the prison. He’d done the best he could, but he couldn’t resist gouging himself a little.

He gagged Clara and bound her hands behind her back with a strip of plastic that dug into her wrists. Then he left her alone. No one beat her, or stabbed her, or shoved her down a flight of stairs.

No one drank her blood.

Malvern made short work of the second prisoner, and the blood worked its magic on her.

Already the skin was starting to grow back over the hole in her forehead. Her hands didn’t look so much like bundles of twigs anymore—they were still mostly made of swollen knuckles and broken nails, but the balls of her thumbs looked positively fleshy. Her complexion was lightening, transforming from the brownish-yellow look of old, untanned leather toward more of the classic unhealthy pallor of an active vampire.

Her missing eye would never grow back, of course. Any wounds a vampire suffered before its first death were never healed, no matter how much blood they consumed. But the one working eye she possessed was growing clearer, and a dull red ember seemed to burn far back in its depths.

How many victims would it take before she was back to full strength? Until she was as powerful as the bloodthirsty killing machines Laura had been fighting for so long? Even then, of course, it wouldn’t last. For a vampire as old as Malvern, it would take a constant influx of new blood to maintain this level of vigor. Probably after the interrupted Tupperware party, or after the bar she’d attacked, there had been this same transformation, and then she had just rotted away again almost instantly afterward. But here, now—there was the promise of more blood to come. These few victims, Clara understood, were just the first of many. Malvern would be able to support her habit for a very, very long time now that she controlled the place. There would be no shortage of bodies for her to drain, not in this prison.

Clara stared at the warden. The older woman stared back calmly, without a trace of guilt on her features.

“If you want me to feel bad for these two, you can save your energy,” the warden said, reading Clara’s expression. “This one,” she said, kicking the corpse of the young blond, “was in for IDSI.”

Clara winced. IDSI was “indecent deviant sexual intercourse.” It was what the courts were calling the crime that had once been known as sodomy, and it could cover a wide range of offenses, none of them pretty.

“She raped her little sister with a hairbrush, if you want to know. The other one has been in and out of my prison since she was eighteen. Every time we let her out she would go right to her crack dealer and whore herself for a piece of rock. Before she knew it she would be right back in here. A total waste of human potential, and the kind of recidivist who has no desire to be rehabilitated. I’m not going to lose any sleep over either of them.”

Malvern rose slowly from where she’d been kneeling over the second victim. “Enough moralizing, girl. What shall ye tell me of the men ye cannot trust?”

The warden looked at Malvern with an expression of pure reverence. “Your half-deads have been here all day, killing the COs I knew I couldn’t trust and replacing them. The rest might take things the wrong way, so they’re being herded even now into cells. We’ll lock them up and give them the same choice we give the prisoners.”

“Very good. And of the authorities outside these walls?”

The warden held up her BlackBerry. “I’ve been in touch with the local police department and the regional bureau of the state police. I’ve told them we had a small riot but that it was contained and we didn’t need any help. That’ll make sure nobody comes within ten miles of the prison until I give them the word that everything’s clear. We should have at least twenty-four hours before anyone starts asking questions, and even then they won’t know what’s really going on. During an emergency all the phone lines out of the prison are shut down except for my private line. We’re in total lockdown, and therefore in total control of the facility.”

“Very good,” Malvern said.

Clara tried to pay attention to what they were saying. She knew it was important—she had to understand the situation she’d stumbled into. But her eyes kept refusing to look at the vampire or the warden. They kept straying to look again at the bloodless corpses lying on the carpet between them.

Malvern followed her gaze. “Are ye thinking, Clara, that ye’re next?” she asked.

Clara could say nothing with the gag in her mouth. She knew her eyes had to be very wide. She’d been forced to watch as Malvern gorged herself, again and again. Now she could feel sweat rolling down her forehead and toward her eyes. Fear sweat.

“Ah, but ye’re different from this pile of corpses,” Malvern told her. There was the ghost of a chuckle in her voice. “Or at least—ye have somewhat that makes ye different. Special. Do ye know what it is?”

She waited patiently, as if expecting Clara to answer.

Clara turned her head slowly from side to side.

Malvern leaned close, close enough to kiss. Her skin was so cold and—and wrong—that Clara felt her own gooseflesh pulling back away from the contact. Malvern whispered in her ear. “Ye’re loved.”

Clara whined in fear. She knew exactly what Malvern meant. Her throat tried to form a word, even if her mouth couldn’t finish it. Laura.

Malvern nodded as if she had heard Clara perfectly. “She’ll come for ye, across any measure of space or peril. Right now she’s hiding behind a locked door where I just can’t reach. Yet when she knows ye’re in danger, how long do ye suppose it shall take her to come a-running?”

Malvern smiled. It is not a pretty thing when any vampire smiles. The teeth seem to spread outward, to grow even larger, to grow even in number. Malvern’s grin could draw blood all on its own.

She spun away, and almost danced across the room. It couldn’t last, but for the moment her skin looked almost pink. Almost flushed with blood. “Someone remove that rag from her mouth. I’d speak with her now.”

A half-dead reached up behind Clara’s head and untied her gag.

“She’s too smart for that,” Clara said, all at once. “She won’t fall for your trap. Anyway, I broke up with her today. Most likely she hates me right now and wants me to die.”

Malvern glanced briefly at the warden, who shook her head in negation.

“I was listening to their conversation the whole time. They spent most of it talking about you, Miss Malvern. They never talked about breaking up at all.”

Malvern smiled again, but it wasn’t such a maniacal grin this time. It was more of a shrewd, knowing leer. “You’re very brave. But I must insist—I’ve planned this ever so well. Timed it to a nicety. I found the one hour, in all the month, when you two were in one place. Have faith, girl. I’m cleverer than you by half.”

Clara bit her tongue before she could say anything more.

She didn’t want to accidentally tell Malvern something she might find useful. Instead, she thought, she needed to steer the conversation around to where she was learning things she didn’t know before. “That’s the whole point of this? Of taking over the prison? Just to get Laura?”

Malvern shrugged happily. “How I wish life could be that simple. No, child. This dungeon vile can offer me so much more. Look, already, how I bloom like a flower in a hothouse.” She held up her arms, which were clearly plumping out.

“But it can’t last. You killed all those guards, and took their blood, but what about tomorrow night? You’re going to get hungry again. And just by being here you’ll draw attention to yourself. The police will be all over this prison by morning. They’ll surround it, set up kill zones around every exit. You may have gotten one good meal, but it’ll be your last.”

Malvern’s head drooped forward as if she were considering everything Clara had said. Then she lifted it again and stared out the window at the stars she could see over the curtain wall. “When I was a child of mortality, like yourself, I had taken a profession up, namely, I ran a gaming house. A pleasant enough suite of rooms in Manchester where gentlemen could come together and play pitch and faro—card games. I always forget no one plays faro anymore. They played whist, as well, following the rules that Hoyle wrote. Do men still play whist when they feel lucky?”

“Really, really, old men,” Clara said.

Malvern chuckled. “’Twas all the rage, whist, in the year of our Lord seventeen-and-twelve. It is a game played without speaking, where only the eyes may make strategy. It was considered thus a poor game for women, as we were believed unable to go so long without gossiping.” Malvern shot a sly glance at Clara. “But oh, how the discriminating gentlemen favored it— for hours they would sit and be still and the only true thing in the universe seemed the fall of the lead, and the dance that followed, as each played looking to take book, and then the odd tricks—”

“Excuse me,” Clara interrupted, “but I beg your fucking pardon. What has this got to do with anything?”

Malvern had been standing next to the window. A heartbeat later she was leaning over Clara’s shoulder, resting her bony chin on Clara’s clavicle. Clara had never seen a human move that fast. She’d never seen a vampire move that fast. “My point is only this, dear. The odds may shift and flow. The wagers may be steep or thin. Yet a result may never be called until the last card is turned o’er. Do not discount me yet, nor until you see my heart torn out and burnt by your lover’s hand. Like all good ladies who play at a game, I may just have a high trump down my sleeve.”