53.

Geistdoerfer struggled against his bonds, trying to drag his hands up to his face. He moaned like a starving kitten, cried out sometimes like a man in pain. He writhed on top of the display case until he could press his nose and cheek against the smooth wood. With his shoulder he shoved himself along the surface until his head was hanging over the side. For a moment he lifted his neck to stare at them, to see the strange collection of people who were mute witnesses to his revival. Then he brought his head down fast and hard, smashing the sharp corner of the display case with his nose.

Caxton winced to hear cartilage snap and part under his pale skin. She watched in mute horror as he brought his head back for another bash that tore open part of his cheek. No blood oozed from the wound, but the skin parted like torn silk, revealing gray muscle tissue underneath. A third time he reared up, but Harold was already rushing across the room, grabbing at the rope that bound the dead professor, pulling him back, away from the edge.

“He’s gone crazy,” the night watchman gasped. “He’s trying to kill himself, again!”

“No,” Arkeley told him. “There’s not enough human left in him for that.”

Caxton turned away in disgust. She knew exactly what Arkeley meant. Half-deads were not human beings. They weren’t the people they had been before they died. The curse animated their bodies and it could read their memories, but their souls were already gone, their personalities completely cut away.

Half-deads existed only to serve their vampire masters. Beyond that they knew little but pain and self-loathing. The curse hated the body it possessed, hated it so much it took every opportunity to deface the physical form. Literally deface it, in fact—the first thing half-deads did on their rebirth was to tear and claw at their faces until the skin hung down in bloodless strips.

“Hold him tight. He won’t be very strong,” Arkeley said.

Harold grimaced. Caxton saw something in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. Had they pushed him past his limit? “This is it, Jameson,” he said. “After this I don’t owe you nothing. You and her get out of here and I pretend like I never knew you. Got it?”

“Yes, yes, fine, but please,” Arkeley said, “hold him.”

Harold twisted the rope in his hands. Geistdoerfer loosed a pained howl. He shook and strained and tried to tear free, but the rope just cut into his deliquescing flesh. After a while he started to settle down, and then he turned his damaged face to look right at Caxton.

A chill ran down her back as his dead eyes studied her. “I was dead. I was happier dead,” he said. “What have you done to me?” His voice had risen in pitch and become a perverted mockery of the professor’s easy tenor.

Arkeley moved closer to the undead thing and crouched down to get on his eye level. “We have some questions for you. If you answer them nicely, we’ll put you out of your misery. Do you understand?”

The half-dead spat in Arkeley’s face. It was the kind of thing Geistdoerfer would never have done in life—the man had been cultured and refined. “I don’t serve you,” he whined.

Arkeley stood up and wiped the spit off his face with a handkerchief. He looked back at Malvern in her coffin and cleared his throat pointedly.

The vampire’s hand glided across the laptop’s keyboard.

i have raised him and it has drained me
i have not the strength to compel him

Maybe, Caxton thought. Or maybe she’d gotten what she wanted out of the exchange and she no longer cared what happened next.

The half-dead stared at the thing in the coffin and laughed, a fractured, ugly sound that bounced around the corners of the room. “You’re working with her?”

“Why is that so strange?” Arkeley asked. “She’s the enemy of your killer. I’d think you’d want to help her.”

“Then you don’t know how it all works.” The half-dead let out another laugh, this time almost giggling.

“Oh,” Arkeley said, “I think I understand a little. I didn’t really expect you to be reasonable, but I thought we’d give you the chance. It didn’t work. So I guess we’ll have to go the more traditional route.” Without warning he grabbed a handful of the half-dead’s hair and yanked upward, dragging his head up, wrenching his neck around. “What’s his name?”

“Who?”

Arkeley bounced the thing’s head off the top of the display case. “Harold,” he said, “maybe you could find me a toolbox from somewhere. I need a hammer and maybe a pair of needlenose pliers.”

“No,” the abomination moaned, and bounced on the wooden case as he tried to break free of Arkeley’s grip. As infirm and decrepit as he might be, though, Arkeley was still stronger than any half-dead.

“I think we’ll start by pulling his teeth out. Then maybe his fingernails.”

“Don’t—”

“Don’t what?” Arkeley asked. “Don’t hurt you? I tried to be nice.”

Harold let go of the rope and walked off into the shadows. Arkeley placed his good hand across the half-dead’s temple and cheek and then leaned down hard, using all his weight, pressing Geistdoerfer’s skull into the wood of the case. The thing screamed horribly.

Caxton licked her lower lip. It was suddenly very dry. “Arkeley,” she said. “You’re going too fast. Give him another chance, for God’s sake.”

The old man stared at her with pure anger burning in his eyes. Then one of his eyelids drooped down and flicked back up. Was that?—yes. Yes, it had been a wink, Caxton thought. A wink.

He thought she was playing a game. The oldest interrogation game: good cop, bad cop. That hadn’t been her intention. She just didn’t think she could bear to watch Arkeley torture even a dead man.

“Listen,” she said, leaning over a little to look into Geistdoerfer’s bloodless face. “Listen, maybe if you just tell me a few things, maybe this doesn’t have to be so bad. I mean, is that something you might do?”

The half-dead’s face writhed as if bugs were burrowing under his cheeks and lips. “I don’t know his name,” he said, quickly. “He never told me. He just said he was a soldier. And then he said he had been tricked, that he’d never wanted to be a vampire. That it was all a trick! Please!”

Caxton looked up and Arkeley let a little of the pressure off.

“Who tricked him?” she asked. She threw a thumb over her shoulder, gesturing at the coffin behind her. “Her? Was it somebody named Justinia Malvern?”

“I…I’m not sure. I think so.”

Arkeley leaned on his head.

“Yes! Yes,” the half-dead screamed. “It had to be! That was why—why he wanted to kill her so badly. Oh God! Tell him to stop!”

“I will,” Caxton said, “but first I need something more. Something we can use. You have to tell me what he’s going to do next. Will he try to kill Malvern again?”

“Y-yes. I think—I mean, I know he will. It was the one thing he wanted to accomplish. He knows you’ll catch him eventually. He wants to kill her first. That’s all I know—I swear!” His eyes swiveled to look past her. “Oh, God, please please please please please…”

Harold had returned. He had a long red toolbox in one hand. The other held a big power drill.

“You don’t have much time left,” she said. “You need to tell me something more. Just think, okay? Don’t guess, but think. Will he come back tomorrow night?”

“I don’t know—I don’t know,” the half-dead creaked.

“Think!” she shouted.

“Yes yes yes, he will, he’ll come back, he’ll—he mentioned something once, he just said it in an offhand way, but but but—”

“But what?” she asked.

“That night you chased him. When you chased him onto the battlefield, he came back, he came back and we talked a little. He said you were dangerous. He said he might not be able to do what he needed to do by himself. That he might need help.”

“Help.” Caxton made a hard line of her mouth. “You mean reinforcements. More half-deads like you?”

The thing on the display case managed to wiggle its head back and forth in negation. “No. He swore he would never make a half-dead. He swore it a hundred times—I think—I think there was something there, some story he didn’t tell me. He seemed to think that killing people and drinking their blood could maybe be okay, but that calling them back from the dead was the real sin. I don’t know why.”

“Then where would he get reinforcements?” Caxton demanded. A high whining, grinding noise startled her. She looked up. Harold had stretched an extension cord across the floor and had plugged in his power drill. “We’re out of time,” she said.

“Other vampires!” the half-dead screeched. “He’ll come back with more vampires. More—maybe lots more.”

Arkeley grabbed his hair again and pulled his head back. “He’s going to make new vampires? That’ll take some time. At least another night. That’s good, that’s useful to us.”

The half-dead stared up into Arkeley’s hard eyes. “Why would he do that? Why make new ones when he already has ninety-nine of them waiting to strike?”