23 Hours: A Vengeful Vampire Tale

48.

She could jump over the counter and be through one of the

Hub’s many doors before Guilty Jen could catch her. She could find Clara somehow and overpower her guards. There’d be time for a quick hug, and then they would take down Malvern together and—

No. It wouldn’t work. She would never find Clara in time.

She had the hunting knife, which would work as well on Guilty Jen as it would on a half-dead. She could throw it, because Jen wouldn’t be expecting that. It was painted green, so it wouldn’t even glint as it sailed through the air. She could make sure it hit Jen somewhere painful but nonfatal, and then she could make the gangbanger tell her where Clara was being kept, and then—

Not a chance. Jen was too fast. She would hear the knife coming, or something.

There didn’t seem to be any way of saving Clara. There didn’t seem to be a real chance of surviving a fight with Guilty Jen. She’d tried that once already, back when she’d actually had a full belly and a night’s sleep. Jen was too fast, and her training in the martial arts just made her too deadly. Caxton was great at killing vampires. That took brains, determination, and high-tech guns. She knew next to nothing about unarmed combat against human opponents.

Across from her, still standing in the doorway of the machine-gun nest, Jen glanced at her wrist. She wasn’t wearing a watch, but Caxton understood the gesture. Nodding in resignation, she put one knee up on the counter. “I guess you know me pretty well,” Caxton said.

“I know your type,” Jen agreed.

Caxton slipped the hunting knife inside her stab-proof vest. Her best plan was to keep it hidden, then bring it out when Jen least expected it. She doubted it would work, but it was the only clever idea she had. “What type’s that?”

“The type that cares about people getting hurt. You’ll do just about anything if I threaten your girlfriend. You’d get down on your knees and lick my cunt right now if I said I’d spare her life, wouldn’t you?”

Caxton grunted as she grabbed the edge of the counter and hauled herself out of her hiding place. “Is that an offer?”

“No,” Guilty Jen said.

Caxton dropped to her feet on the far side of the counter. The burning trash can that was the Hub’s sole source of light was slightly to her left. She moved so that it was between her and the other woman.

“It’s a weakness. It’s something your enemies can exploit.” Jen tilted her head to one side. “So why do you let yourself feel that way?”

Caxton squinted at the gangbanger. Did she really need to ask that question? Maybe she did. Guilty Jen seemed to live in a world with a few very basic rules. Love and its obligations did not seem to be one of them. “I don’t think I can explain it very well. I guess you could say it’s what separates me from the monsters. I knew a guy once, my mentor. He didn’t care about people. He only cared about killing vampires. He was willing to use innocent people as cannon fodder. As diversions. Even as bait.” He’d used Caxton as vampire bait more than once. She had put up with it because she was learning from him every time he put her in danger. He was dead now. She wasn’t. “I swore I’d never be like that, that I would manage to have some kind of life besides just killing vampires. That meant having people like Clara, who—”

“Bored.” Guilty Jen sighed dramatically. “You want the first swing?”

Caxton smiled. She knew a trap when she heard one. “Let’s just wing it,” she said. She flicked her baton outward, extending it to its full length.

Jen bowed. And then she attacked.

She had to cover five yards of empty space before she could land a blow on Caxton. Those five yards included the burning trash can. She started to dodge left around it, signaling the move to force Caxton to dodge the other way and keep it between them. Caxton chose instead to roll to her right, closing the distance between them faster than Jen expected. She came out of her roll with her baton swinging upward, grip first. If she could shatter Jen’s kneecap straight out of the gate, this could be over very fast.

But Jen’s knee wasn’t there when her swing followed through. Instead her leg was up in the air, spinning through the deadly arc of a roundhouse kick. Caxton managed to get her head down before it was knocked off her neck, but that left her in a bad position, one knee and one arm down on the floor, her back arched up in the air, unable to see very well where the next blow would come from.

Jen spun around like a top and brought her feet down in a fighting stance like a sumo wrestler. Her hands were bunched into fists at her waist and she cried out in victory as she readied a double punch toward Caxton’s kidneys.

A punch like that would kill her. The trauma to her kidneys could lead to massive internal bleeding. Without prompt medical attention, which was definitely not available, there would be no way to stop the bleeding, and she would die in a matter of minutes. Caxton’s body knew what to do next, even if her mind was stuck for ideas. Her legs flashed out and backward like the legs of a frog jumping off a hot stone. It wasn’t much of a sweep, but it caught Guilty Jen off guard and made her stumble backward to keep her balance.

That gave Caxton just enough time to get back up on her feet and facing Jen.

Guilty Jen grinned and dropped into a low fighting crouch, one fist extended toward Caxton, the other at her hip.

“We’re wasting each other’s time here,” Caxton said. “The vampire—”

“Bored.” Without warning Jen lunged forward in an attack.

Caxton shoved her hand under her vest and pulled out the hunting knife. She didn’t have time to swing, so it would need to be a lunge, right into the other woman’s attack. Hopefully the knife would be a surprise for Jen, one she couldn’t prepare for. Caxton braced herself against the blow, bringing her other arm up to protect her face, just as Guilty Jen’s body twisted in midair. Jen’s back collided painfully with Caxton’s chest and her arms lifted up, hard. The knife was tugged out of Caxton’s grip and flew through the air to clatter on the floor.

Jen’s hands grabbed Caxton’s now-empty knife hand in a tight grip. She felt something hot and wet slick against the back of her hand—she must have cut Jen, anyway, must have sliced her palm—and then—

Hot agony raced up Caxton’s arm, all the way to her shoulder. She felt her arm twisting under pressure, felt her bones resisting, felt them start to give way—

She screamed as half the bones in her hand and forearm snapped, all at once. Guilty Jen gave her a last sadistic yank and dropped Caxton, moaning, to the floor.

She tried to force herself to get up, tried to will her body to obey her, but her muscles were twitching wildly and her blood was roaring in her ears. It was all she could do to breathe, all she could do to keep from passing out from the pain.

Leaning over her, Guilty Jen reached down and placed a hand on either side of her throat. And started to squeeze.

It was at that precise moment that the lights in the Hub came back on.