23 Hours: A Vengeful Vampire Tale

49.

There was a blaring, high-pitched tone and a series of deep clunking sounds as the lights came on one by one. The ventilation system kicked in a second later, sighing out dusty warm air on the back of Caxton’s neck.

Guilty Jen looked up, but she was disciplined enough not to let go of Caxton’s throat. She twisted her hands together and Caxton started to feel the pressure on her windpipe.

“Jen? Jen, what just happened?” a voice said near Caxton’s ear. It sounded like a cell phone set to speakerphone mode. “Jen? Is Caxton dead?”

Caxton tried to raise her baton, which was still clutched in her good hand. She couldn’t find the strength to even begin to swing it, though, before Jen brought one leg around and knocked it out of Caxton’s grip with one knee.

“Jen? Can you hear me?”

Guilty Jen rolled her eyes and stared down at Caxton. “Gimme a second,” she said.

“What? Jen, there’s something you should know, the—”

“I said fucking hold on!” Guilty Jen cursed. Then she growled in frustration and released Caxton’s throat. Caxton started to get up, but Guilty Jen just kicked her in the face and she went back down, hard.

Jen pulled the zipper down on her jumpsuit and reached into her panties. She brought out an expensive-looking Black-Berry and held it up near her mouth. “You got lousy timing, Featherwood. What the hell is going on that’s so important it can’t wait, huh? I got Caxton right where I want her, but I need about thirty seconds to finish things here. Okay? Is that too much to ask?”

“Sorry, Jen, but the sun’s down. I thought you’d want to know. It’s getting pretty dark outside, so the vampires should be waking up any second. I don’t see them on any of the monitors yet, but I figured—hey. Do you want us to kill the girlfriend now?”

Guilty Jen started to open her mouth to respond.

Down on the floor, at that same moment, Caxton was staring at the gangbanger’s ankle. Guilty Jen was wearing prison-issue slippers, but her ankles were exposed. Caxton could see bare skin there.

In a moment, Jen was going to tell her set to kill Clara. This was Caxton’s absolute last chance. Jen had already disarmed her of her hunting knife and her baton. Her shotgun was lying on the floor somewhere nearby, but there was no time to reach it and it wasn’t loaded anyway.

Luckily for Caxton, she had one weapon left. Her stun gun. Striking like a snake, striking for Clara’s life, she lashed out with it and zapped Guilty Jen right in the side of her foot.

The gangbanger dropped the BlackBerry as her whole body started to shake. Her eyes wobbled in her head as she staggered back and forth, trying not to fall down. Caxton released the gun’s trigger and scrambled up to her feet, pivoting before she was even upright to head for the stairs.

Behind her Guilty Jen grabbed at the back of her stab-proof vest.

Hell no, Caxton thought, but she didn’t waste time processing what was happening. She got to the stairs and started stumping up them two at a time, even as Guilty Jen came rushing up behind her.

Caxton must not have given Jen a full charge from the stun gun, she decided. Or maybe Guilty Jen was just that tough. Caxton had heard stories about bikers who could take a full stun gun jolt and not even slow down, but they were always huge guys, big mountains of fat, and they tended to be extremely drunk or high when they did it. Guilty Jen couldn’t weigh more than one-twenty, but she looked like the stun gun had just pissed her off.

Caxton sped past the second-floor landing. She didn’t bother looking into the cooling-down rooms there for Gert— there was no time. She kicked aside the votive candle that still burned on the landing and started up the last flight of stairs to the central command center.

The woman who had called Guilty Jen had said she could see the security monitors. That could only mean that she—and Clara—were up in the top of the central tower. Caxton was sure of it. And Jen’s underlings would never dare to hurt Clara until they knew whether Jen had killed Caxton or not. They would follow her orders to the letter, lest they tick Jen off and suffer the violent consequences. Caxton was sure of it.

She couldn’t afford not to be sure. This was Clara’s only chance.

The door to the command center was right in front of her. She had only to reach up and turn the knob. The gang members in there would be surprised to see her, she could overpower them before they could really react, and then—

Caxton’s legs went out from under her. Guilty Jen had grabbed one of her feet and yanked upward. Caxton went flying and bounced off the steps, sliding downward. Her broken arm collided hard with one wall and she sang out in pain as she slammed into the landing, her teeth grating on the concrete there.

Above her, higher up the stairs, Guilty Jen stood looking down. She was breathing a little faster than normal, and there was a drop of sweat on one of her cheeks. One of her hands was striped with blood where Caxton had cut her. Otherwise she was unscathed. The door to the central command center was right behind her. Caxton would never reach it now. She wasn’t going to save Clara. She wasn’t going to save herself. In a few seconds she would be dead, and everything she had ever cared about and the one woman she had ever truly loved would be destroyed. This was it. The moment she’d known was coming for years now. The moment when her calling failed her.

“I gotta say,” Guilty Jen told her, “you can hold your mud. Well. It’s been fun.”

The gangbanger took a step down toward Caxton. Another step.

Caxton couldn’t have fought back against a kitten just then. Pain, exhaustion, and utter desolation were all dragging her down. Telling her she was finished.

Behind Guilty Jen the door to central command swung open.

Guilty Jen just had time to look surprised as a snow-white hand reached around her face and yanked her backward, out of Caxton’s line of sight.

There was a muffled scream. The instantly recognizable sound of a human neck being snapped, the vertebrae letting go one after the other like popcorn popping. And then a sound that Caxton found far too familiar. The squelching, sucking noise of human blood being drained from a grievous wound.

The vampires were awake, alright.