31.

Caxton squinted. “If you’re making a joke I’m afraid I don’t get it.”

“Then allow me to explain. You were quite right to come here, quite right.” He leaned forward again and opened his eyes, and they flashed with a wild light that made her flinch. “I’m your culprit. I opened that cavern not knowing what I would find inside, but once I saw those coffins, once I saw the first set of bones, I saw the potential. I sent Montrose and the rest of the students away. I don’t think any of them even saw the heart.”

Caxton sat up very straight in her chair. Her Beretta was holstered under her left arm and she was very much aware of it.

“If they did they probably didn’t know what they saw. It looked like a lump of coal, because someone had been good enough to coat it in tar. I imagine they meant to preserve it, though for how long I could not tell you. It was sitting on top of one of the coffins. Just one out of the hundred but I understood. It was meant to go inside—there might as well have been written instructions. I opened the coffin and placed the heart in the center of the rib cage and it started to work almost instantly. You’ll wonder why I did such a stupid thing, of course.” He nodded at the saber on the wall. “I have longed, my entire life, to speak with the poor man who dropped that. I have spent decades imagining what he would say to me, and the questions I would ask him. I thought the fellow in that coffin would be quite forthcoming. And I was right, in a way. He had plenty to say. Of course, he asked most of the questions.”

The temperature in the room had dropped ten degrees while Geistdoerfer spoke. Caxton reached for her handgun, but before she could get her hand up someone reached down from behind her and grabbed both her arms in an iron grip. She didn’t have to look down to know that the hands holding her down would be as pale as snow. She could feel the vampire behind her, feel the way he made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up straight.

“I knew what I was doing. I knew that it was probably a mistake. I felt a certain compulsion, though he tells me he had no power over me at that time. It was pure curiosity that moved me, then. Exactly the thing that killed the cat.”

Geistdoerfer started to remove the dressing on his arm. It took some doing, as he only had one free hand and his mouth to work with. The vampire didn’t speak while Caxton waited to see what lay beneath. The vampire didn’t even breathe on her neck.

The vampire didn’t tear her head off, either, or suck out all her blood. That might mean he just wanted to play with her first. Vampires had very little inner life—they mostly spent their nights pursuing blood, thinking about the blood to come. Occasionally they played with the bodies of their victims, and occasionally they played with their food before they drank. Human death amused them. Corpses could provide them with hours of entertainment.

“It was quite something to see. As soon as I lay the heart among his bones it began. The heart started to shake and jump. The tar on the surface cracked and whitened, then it burst open, as if it were under considerable pressure from within. A kind of white smoke leaked out, except it wasn’t quite smoke. It seemed alive, like it had a will of its own. It filled the coffin and a thin ribbon of it spilled over. I thought it might crawl across the floor and come after me. Then I saw the bones inside that tendril of vapor, the finger bones.”

Caxton barely heard him. She was too busy thinking about what it would be like to be a vampire’s toy. Another possibility, though, was more likely, and also far more chilling. It was possible the vampire didn’t want to kill her because he wanted something from her. One vampire, Efrain Reyes, had wanted her to be his lover. Kevin Scapegrace, who came after, merely wanted her because Malvern had decided it would be ironic to turn her into the thing she had destroyed. Then there was Deanna—but she didn’t want to think about Deanna.

A third possibility presented itself. The night before, this vampire, the emaciated creature that Geistdoerfer had awoken, had spared her life because she was a woman and he was sworn never to hurt a member of the fairer sex. It was possible he was going to let her go again.

She doubted it, though. She doubted it very much. Such niceties belonged to human beings. A vampire, drawn by the smell of blood, would shed gallantry and courtesy quickly enough. What had saved her once was very unlikely to save her twice.

“The smoke solidified as I watched. At first he was as transparent and wobbly as a man made of jelly. Then he sat up and roared, a long, hoarse noise I could barely stand to hear. His whole body shook, even as it grew more and more solid, more complete. Finally he leaped up out of the coffin and stood hunched over in the cavern, looking like he had no idea where he was. He picked up the coffin and smashed it against the wall. I still don’t know whether he was aware for the whole time he was in that box, or whether it was like a long sleep. He didn’t seem to want to spend another second inside it, however.”

Eventually Geistdoerfer got the bandage loose. It fell in a bloody, sticky heap on his desk. What was revealed beneath looked less like a human arm than a raw leg of lamb after a dog got through with it. There were still three fingers on his hand, but most of his wrist and forearm had been gnawed away. His thumb was missing altogether. A little blood welled out of the wound as Geistdoerfer flexed the muscles remaining to him.

When the blood glistened in the open air, the hands holding down Caxton constricted. The grip on her arms grew stronger. She did feel the vampire breathe then—a long, cold sigh of desire that drifted down her neck like a tendril of fog.

“He struck me as hungry, so I offered him a drink,” Geistdoerfer explained. “He was a bit more eager than either of us expected. He has apologized, of course, but I’m not sure that will be enough. I want you to know something, Trooper. I want you to know I had no idea what he would be like. After being buried, tucked away for so long—and he looked so thin, so cadaverously thin. I had no idea if he could even walk under his own power, or how strong he could really be.”

Most people didn’t. It was one reason that people like Arkeley and Caxton had to exist, because most people had no idea what vampires were capable of. You underestimated them at your peril—more often than not, your mortal peril.

“After this happened I wanted to go to the hospital, naturally. I fear I screamed quite a bit. He wouldn’t let me go. He didn’t want to let me get that far out of his sight. I have a friend, a professor here, who gave me the pills I’ve been taking. She has a bad back, but it only bothers her sometimes, and for now she was willing to share. She had plenty of questions herself, but I knew how to fend her off.” Geistdoerfer looked up at her. “You’ve gone very quiet,” he noticed.

“She knows what’s coming,” the vampire said. His voice was a growl, an inhuman burr in her left ear. She closed her eyes as he moved his thick jaw across her neck. She could feel the hardness of his teeth, feel the cold triangular shapes of them pressing against her warm flesh. None of them pricked her, though. He was holding himself back. If he drew her blood, he might not be able to resist his unnatural urge to kill her. “Forgive me if I take a liberty, Miss,” he said, much softer than before. His hand, cold and clammy, stole around the side of her neck. His fingers drew across her throat, then reached down into the collar of her shirt.

“I see you’ve not replaced your amulet,” he said in her ear. His breath stank, though not of blood. It smelled like an open grave. It filled up her nose and her mouth and made her want to pull away.

Still she said nothing.

She was far too scared to speak.

Geistdoerfer replaced his bandage with fresh linen, wrapping it carefully and not too tightly around his ruined arm. Halfway through he had to stop and take some more pills. Finally he slipped his arm back into its sling, and then he rose from the desk and came around to stand next to her.

“I’m going to take your sidearm, now,” he told her. He sounded truly contrite, but she wasn’t about to forgive Geistdoerfer for what he’d done. Garrity’s widow wouldn’t have forgiven him, she knew. With his good hand he drew her Beretta out of its holster and laid it on the desk, well away from her hands. He took the can of pepper spray from her belt and pushed it into his own pants pocket. His hand moved upward, touching the pockets of her coat. He took away her handcuffs and her flashlight. He found the lump of her cell phone next and squeezed it experimentally. He left it where it was. She glanced up, trying to catch his eyes, but his face revealed nothing.