23 Hours: A Vengeful Vampire Tale

26.

It means,” Caxton said, trying to explain to Gert what the vampire wanted, “that in twenty-three hours she’s going to kill my girlfriend. Unless I go and surrender myself to her. Agree to become a vampire and serve her forever.”

“That’s your girlfriend?” Gert asked. She looked up at the security monitor where the same piece of video was looping endlessly. “Huh. She’s cute.”

The video monitors flicked off and Caxton dropped heavily into the guard post’s sole chair. She put her face in her hands and closed her eyes. Let her shoulders fall. This… was bad. Up to that point her main concern had been for her own safety. Her big plan was just to escape, and let someone else deal with the hell that had descended on the prison. Caxton had been prepared well enough for that job. It was easy to keep herself alive—it just took desperation.

Now things had changed. She had a new duty to fulfill. One that would take brains.

She looked up, and over at the door they’d used to get into the loading dock. It wasn’t jumping in its frame anymore. The half-deads were making no attempt to get at them. It looked like Caxton was going to be given some time to think over Malvern’s ultimatum. “Okay,” she said, and Gert looked over at her. Gert’s eyes were wide and expectant. Like a kid waiting for her mommy to tell her what to do. “It’s dawn. That’s why she gave me twenty-three hours. Twenty-three hours from now will be one hour before dawn tomorrow—just enough time to pass on her curse to me before she has to go back in her coffin.”

Gert glanced over at the sky, visible through the gated outer bays of the loading dock. The sky was turning a weak yellow color and a few purple clouds were sailing by overhead. Gert nodded, as if to confirm what Caxton had said. “Okay, that’s not much time. But for right now—it’s daylight! So we’re safe now, right? Vampires can’t do shit during the day. I saw it on the Discovery Channel once.”

Caxton squinted at her celly “I didn’t take you as the type to watch the Discovery Channel much.”

“What, ’cause you think my family couldn’t afford cable?”

“No,” Caxton said, holding up one weary hand in apology, “I just—”

“And not just basic. We got six channels of HBO, ’cause Mom liked the Sarah Jessica Parker show.”

Caxton rubbed her face. “Okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply anything.”

“Discovery has that show about the crab fishermen, I like that one.”

Caxton went on, hoping that Gert had finally run down. “It is true, as you say, that vampires are harmless during daylight hours,” she said. “But half-deads aren’t affected by the sun at all. So we’re still in trouble. I need to think about what we’re going to do next. I have to have a little while to myself to think about that. Why don’t you find someplace comfortable to curl up and catch some sleep?”

“Sure,” Gert said. As easy as that. Her mommy was going to take care of everything—she didn’t need to worry. She picked a corner of the guard post and curled up there in a ball and was snoring a few minutes later.

This left Caxton alone with her thoughts. Which was problematic in itself, because she couldn’t seem to focus on out-thinking Malvern. Her brain was too busy punishing itself.

She shouldn’t be here, Caxton thought. Clara shouldn’t have been at the prison. Caxton should have broken things off with her long ago, back when it still would have been easy. When a phone call would have been enough. Instead she’d forced Clara to come to visit her. To explain things in person, face-to-face. And then she hadn’t even been able to do that. If Caxton had been a better girlfriend, if she’d recognized that Clara needed to move on—

It did not strike her as any kind of terrible coincidence that Malvern had taken over the prison at the exact moment that Clara was finishing up her monthly visit. Caxton knew enough about how Malvern’s brain worked. For years now Caxton had outsmarted every vampire she met—except for one. Malvern always planned ahead. Caxton tended to improvise. As a result Malvern had won every single time, or at least, she’d gotten away. Survived. And that was what drove Malvern, her primary goal in all things—to live just one more night.

Malvern was more than capable of killing Clara when the deadline came. Any vampire would be. They didn’t see human beings as rational creatures with thoughts and feelings. They saw humans as livestock. Malvern wouldn’t bat an eyelash she didn’t have. In fact, Caxton knew, there was no guarantee that Malvern would even keep Clara alive for another minute, now that she’d served her purpose. She hadn’t claimed in her message that Clara would be around for another twenty-three hours. She hadn’t said anything of the sort.

But thinking like that was going to get Caxton exactly no where. She had to believe that Clara would be alive for almost a full day longer. That Caxton would have a chance to rescue her.

And kill Malvern, as soon as she was sure Clara was safe.

That was essential. She’d been fighting Malvern for years, and while she’d always saved the day, and kept people from being killed—most people, anyway—Malvern had always gotten away at the last second. She couldn’t let that happen again.

Malvern was clearly planning something big this time. She must be drinking gallons of blood to look so healthy and strong. Caxton could guess where it was coming from. She must be draining the prison population, using them as a captive food source. The administrators of the prison must be dead or collaborating to allow that to happen. Someone in the administration—the warden, she remembered—had been IMing with someone who used the same convoluted, archaic English that Malvern was famous for. She hadn’t quite put it together at the time, but it was obvious now. So this had been an inside job.

But turning the prison into her own private blood bank seemed to lack Malvern’s usual elegance. Malvern always thought several moves ahead, and she must know that her time at the prison was limited. Eventually someone on the outside was going to wonder why none of the COs had come off duty and gone home to their wives or husbands. Or maybe some prison bus would show up at the front gate, loaded with new inmates, and there would be nobody to let it in. One way or another the authorities would come in force, and then Malvern would be forced to fight her way out of the prison. No matter how tough vampires were, they could still be taken down by enough cops with assault rifles. She couldn’t be looking forward to that confrontation.

Malvern was on borrowed time. And yet she seemed in no rush. She was giving Caxton almost a full day to think over her offer. A nearly full day, half of which she would spend inside her coffin, unable to direct her minions, unable to fight for herself.

Of course, she hadn’t made it too easy for Caxton. The prison was still full of half-deads, and presumably at least one living human, who would keep Caxton from getting into too much trouble. Especially since they could watch her every move, keep track of everywhere she went, through the hundreds of video cameras that monitored every corner of the prison.

Caxton jumped up and grabbed at the camera mounted to the ceiling of the guard post. It held firm, even when she put all her weight on it. Grunting in frustration, finally she grabbed the pepper spray canister out of her bra and gave the lens a good coating. It would at least ruin the camera’s focus, even if it made the close air in the guard post stink of spicy food, and that made Caxton’s stomach rumble.

Those cameras. She couldn’t spray every single one of them.

But maybe there was something she could do about them.