23 Hours: A Vengeful Vampire Tale

60.

By five o’clock in the morning the fires had all been put out.

The vast majority of the prisoners were back in their cells, grumbling but more or less happy once the Feds started handing out food and coffee. A few were unaccounted for. The white supremacists barricaded in the cafeteria were still making demands, but it sounded like they were arguing among themselves in there and there was no place for them to go. A SWAT team of hostage negotiators had assured Fetlock that they could resolve the situation peacefully.

Up on the wall, Clara looked down at a prison that was as close to being back to normal as she could hope for. A lot of people had died, and a lot of people had suffered. But it was over.

Kind of.

Five o’clock. Clara checked her watch again. This was it, the end of the twenty-three-hour deadline. An hour still to go before dawn. By now she was supposed to be dead. She shuddered at the thought.

Fetlock and Glauer came up the stairs huffing and puffing.

She had called them and said there was something they needed to see. She wasn’t sure how she should present it, though. As the team’s forensic analyst, it had been her job to look at all the bodies, including Malvern’s. Fetlock didn’t seem to know what he expected her to find, but it was part of any investigation that you checked the bodies afterward, and he was a man who did everything by the book.

“She was here,” Clara said, when they looked at her expectantly. “Laura. I mean, Caxton. This is where she left the prison.” A makeshift rope had been dangled over the outside of the wall, tied at the top to a window of a watchtower. The rope looked like it was made out of nylon restraints buckled together, and it was more than long enough to reach the ground. “Most of the police units were inside the wall at that point, and the ones outside were busy at the main gate rounding up attempted escapees. Caxton could scale the wall here and run into those woods without being seen. She’s had at least a couple hours to get away.”

“I’ll find her,” Fetlock said. “The U.S. Marshals Service is good at that sort of thing, at least.”

Glauer looked sharply at their boss, but he didn’t say anything. What could he say? Laura was a fugitive from justice now. If she had returned to her cell and just waited for the cops to arrive, maybe all could have been forgiven. She could have served out the rest of her sentence quietly and then been released. But now she was a problem, and she had to be hunted down and arrested again, prosecuted again. Given a whole new sentence. Fetlock was never going to just let her go. He wasn’t that kind of man.

“Why did she run?” Glauer asked, confused. “I don’t get it. She was done! The vampires are all dead. Why would she make more trouble for herself?”

Clara knew that Glauer had personally been responsible for killing Forbin. He had been leading a SWAT team when they found two persons tangled up in a coil of barbed wire, apparently trying to struggle their way out. He’d had the presence of mind to realize that one was dead and the other was a vampire, and he had dispatched the latter without much fuss. Sometimes you got lucky.

Clara cleared her throat. “This isn’t actually what I wanted you to see. The vampire’s corpse is in the tower over here.” She led them toward the tower, working out her next words precisely. “I’d like to have a pretty serious autopsy done on the warden.”

“Why?” Fetlock asked. “You made a positive identification based on her clothing and build. This looks like a closed case to me. Do you know how badly I want this to be a closed case, Special Deputy Hsu?”

“Yes, sir. No more than Special Deputy Glauer or I do, I’m sure. The warden’s body was almost unrecognizable, though. The face and the hands suffered fourth-degree burns, making it impossible to get fingerprints or even dental records to fully identify her. I’d really like to see if we can do a DNA screen.”

“Whatever,” Fetlock told her. “I don’t see the point, but if it makes you happy. You want to tell me why you think that body isn’t Augusta Bellows, though?”

“I think Malvern was playing a very deep game here,” Clara said. “I think she never intended to occupy the prison for very long, and that the vampires she created here were not meant to survive. I think she had something in mind other than just a ready supply of blood and recruits.”

“Well, obviously she came here because of Caxton,” Fetlock said. “She wanted revenge. And it backfired on her.”

“Perhaps, sir. I just want to make sure. Let me show you why.” She led them into the tower room. The corpses inside had not been moved. She would perform a more in-depth examination eventually, but for the moment she wanted to wait until she could get a camera up there and fully document the scene. It had to be done before Laura’s final message was disturbed.

On the floor there was a large amount of debris from a broken searchlight. Bits of glass and shards of broken mirror littered the floor. Laura had quite carefully arranged the pieces to spell out three words. She hadn’t possessed any normal writing utensils or any other way to leave a message, but like a smart prisoner she’d learned to make do with what she had. The message was very short. It simply read:

it’s not her

There was an arrow pointing to the vampire’s body.

“Oh, come on,” Fetlock said in disgust. “She only has one eye, the dress is the same. She looks a lot more… fresh than we’re used to, but that’s simply because she was full of blood. That has to be Malvern. It has to be!”

The last time Clara had seen the warden, she’d been missing an eye. She’d been missing her left eye, just like Malvern. She could have easily killed herself before sundown and then been put in a coffin by waiting half-deads—no one had seen her after she left her desk above the Hub. Clara remembered the call Bellows had made to Guilty Jen, and how immediately after it ended she had heard a gunshot she couldn’t explain. That could have been the sound of Bellows taking her own life, the last step necessary before the curse consumed her and turned her into a vampire.

As for Malvern—she probably had left the prison long before the police had secured its perimeter. She could have left the prison as early as sundown the day before, immediately after sending her “23 hours” message. Clara had wondered why the message had been so brief, and she saw now that it didn’t have to mean anything, really. It could very well mean that, twenty-three hours after the message was sent, Malvern would be a free vampire. Far, far away from the prison.

She could have left the warden in her place, to act like her and speak like her and wear her old tattered dress. The two of them could have worked it all out in advance. Bellows wanted very badly to become a vampire. In exchange Malvern might have insisted that Bellows pretend to be her. To kill Caxton herself. But Bellows wouldn’t have known about the loaded gun, left just where it needed to be—the final double-cross in Malvern’s plan.

And she’d almost gotten away with it.

After all, if Laura Caxton, the world’s foremost expert on killing vampires, claimed that she had killed Justinia Malvern— who would ever doubt her? Fetlock would close his case. The long hunt for Malvern would be over. Which was exactly what she wanted. She wouldn’t have police studying her every move. Laying traps for her. She could lie low, and scheme her schemes, and wait for the right moment to come back. Maybe after all of them were dead.

It was the perfect plan.

And looking at Fetlock’s face, Clara wasn’t sure it hadn’t worked. He looked skeptical. “You think we should just take Caxton at her word? When all the evidence points in a different direction? As far as I’m concerned, Malvern is dead. Truly dead. Case closed. And if she’s dead, then vampires are extinct, and we win.”

His face made it very clear he refused to accept the other possibility. That Malvern had beaten them once again.

Laura had known he would have that reaction. That was why she ran.

Because it wasn’t over.