13 Bullets (Laura Caxton / Vampires #1)

13 Bullets (Laura Caxton / Vampires #1) Page 57

Deanna touched her mouth, her chin. Her fingers trailed down across Caxton's throat and then wove themselves around her belt. In the blue, uncertain light of the tiny flashlight Deanna didn't look half bad. Even if she was undead.

"It's good to see you," she said, very softly.

"Dee," she sighed. "Dee. You can't be. You didn't-you didn't."

"I didn't kill myself?" Deanna asked. Her voice had that growling quality they got. Her skin was the color of skim milk. She could probably tie a steel bar in knots with her bare hands.

But she was Deanna, alive again. Or almost.

"I broke that window with my own hands. I cut myself up." Deanna's eyes wandered upward to Caxton's. "I guess that counts," Deanna said. Under the growl there was a breathy quality to the voice. A sexy kind of flutter. It made Caxton's skin itch.

It would be technically incorrect to say that Caxton thought Deanna was actually alive. She knew better than that. Or rather, her brain knew better. Her body had its own ideas and its own memories. It remembered the shape of Deanna, the shape of Deanna when she was alive. It remembered her smell.

"How could you do this to us? You know what I am. What I've been working on," Caxton said. She stepped closer and touched Deanna's strangely lumpy jaw.

"You're so cold," she said. She leaned forward and touched her forehead to the vampire's forehead. They used to do that, when they were alone, and things were quiet. They used to press up against each other. It felt pretty much the same this time.

"I didn't have a choice. I mean-except I did. Congreve." The vampire closed her eyes and pressed her hands against her toothy mouth. She shook with weeping. Caxton couldn't stand to see it. "Shh," she said. "Shh." She put her arms around Deanna's slender form. She wanted to press her tight until she warmed up again. Until she was a real girl again. A sob died in the middle of Caxton's throat. It didn't make it up to the surface. "How do you know about Congreve?"

Deanna pushed Caxton away. She used just enough of her strength to get out of the embrace, but underneath Caxton could feel just how much more power Deanna had if she chose to use it. It was like being shoved gently away by a pickup truck. Deanna wouldn't hurt Caxton, though. She would never harm her lover. Caxton could feel it in the way Deanna touched her, in the way they moved around each other.

"They're going to let us be together forever. That wasn't possible otherwise."

Caxton shook her head. "Forever. Sure. Forever like one of them. Have you seen Malvern?"

Deanna laughed and it almost sounded like her old laugh. "Of course I have. She called me here." She was gone then, away from Caxton's body and that felt wrong. Deanna sat down on one of the bedframes and hugged herself. Caxton kneeled down to bring their faces closer together. "Justinia is the one who made this possible. I was going to die, Pumpkin. I was going to die and I didn't know how else to save myself."

"Shh," Caxton said, and she reached with her thumbs to dry Deanna's tears. What leaked from the corners of the vampire's eyes wasn't water, though, but dark blood. Caxton wiped her fingers on her pants.

"Maybe you'd better tell me how this happened," Caxton said. Yes. That was good. She had to start thinking like a cop again. But it was so hard with Deanna right there, a Deanna who still moved and spoke and wept.

"Congreve was going to kill me. It wasn't anything personal. He was just in the neighborhood, hunting and he found me. He came to the house one night when you were out at work. The dogs started singing and the light in the shed went on. I went to see what was happening. I grabbed the long screwdriver from the toolkit and I went back there and I said, 'Whoever's in there, you'd better fuck off out of here. My girlfriend's a cop.' But nothing happened. So I went to the door of the shed and that's when he grabbed me."

"Congreve?" Caxton asked. But how was that possible? She and Arkeley had killed Congreve long before Deanna's accident.

"Yes. His hands were really rough with calluses and they held me so tight. He told me I was going to die and I started screaming and begging. He told me to shut up and I tried. I really tried. He asked me if I was the artist, if the blankets in the shed were mine and I said no, because I thought maybe he was some crazy religious guy or something and he wanted to kill me for my art. He made me look into his eyes then and I saw he wasn't human at all. I couldn't lie to him then, not even if I wanted to. I said yes."

"Oh, God," Caxton moaned. "He hypnotized you. He transmitted the curse to you and you couldn't even know what was happening."

Deanna shrugged. "I don't like to think of it that way. He was an artist too, he said. A musician. He really got my work, Laura. That has to count for something, right? He said talent like mine shouldn't be wasted. He asked me if I wanted to live or die. Just like that. You know, I actually had to think about it." Deanna looked down at her hands. She picked at the front of the dress. Caxton realized, suddenly, where she'd seen it before. It was the Best Person dress that Deanna had worn to her brother's wedding. Had the Purfleets buried her in it?

"He made you like him. You must have said you wanted to live," Caxton said, trying to get back on track.

Deanna nodded. "Then he went away. And I started having those dreams. The dreams about you bleeding to death."

Caxton crab-walked backwards and sat down on a bedframe so she could face Deanna. They were two women, two living women sitting on beds, their knees almost touching. Two women just having a conversation. That was all, she told herself.

Deanna lowered her face until her voice was muffled by her folded arms. "I fought the curse, as much as I could. I tried not to sleep. It's in your dreams that they make you hurt yourself. But that's the merciful part, isn't it? You don't feel a thing as long as you're dreaming. I wish I'd known what it was going to be like so I wouldn't have been so afraid. I'm really sorry, Laura. I'm sorry I got so scared. Otherwise I wouldn't have told them about you."

"What are you talking about?" Caxton asked, trying to keep her voice gentle.

"I told them I couldn't do it alone. I couldn't be one of them if because it would mean leaving you behind. Mr. Reyes said he had the answer for that, though. He said they could take both of us. He really seemed to like the idea."

No, it hadn't happened like that. It couldn't have. Caxton felt like she'd gotten to the end of a jigsaw puzzle and found the picture didn't match the cover of the box. She shook her head. "That doesn't make sense, Deanna. Your story is all mixed up."

"What do you mean?" the vampire asked.

"This-this case-was all about me, at least, it was about me first. Because I stopped the half-dead at my sobriety checkpoint. That was how Reyes found out about me." That was the one thing she actually knew for sure, the one clue she'd really had firm and solid in her mind the whole time. It was why Arkeley had drafted her into his crusade in the first place. It was why the half-dead had followed her home. Because the vampires wanted her as one of their own.

"Pumpkin," Deanna said, rising to her feet. Caxton followed. "Does it really matter who did what first?"

"Of course it does." It meant everything. The vampires had come after her. They'd been obsessed with her. "This all began on the night of my sobriety check. When the half-dead followed me home."

Deanna shook her bald head, just a little. "No, Laura, no. It started weeks before that."

"Bullshit," Caxton huffed. She wrapped her arms around herself. "Anyway, how could you know that?"

"Jesus, stop already. You're not this stupid!" Deanna stood up and Caxton followed, but it felt as if she got to her feet first. Deanna was still rising. Eventually she raised herself up to a considerable height. Had she grown after being dead? Or maybe her posture was just better. "That half-dead didn't just accidentally run across your sobriety check. He was coming to get you."

"No." No, no, no, she thought. "No."

"Yes." Deanna reached out and grabbed Caxton's shoulders. Hard enough to pinch. Maybe even to hurt a little. She really wanted to convince Caxton that she was telling the truth. "Congreve sent him to find you, and bring you to him, so you and I could do this together."

"No," Caxton said again.

"Yes. Because I was scared to do it alone. And because Reyes wanted a matching pair of us. I was so confused when you woke me up that night as if nothing had happened. Then you scared away the half-dead. The one assigned to you."

No, Caxton thought, but she couldn't say it. If she said it she thought it might come out as a yes. Because she saw it could be exactly as Deanna said. It could be. But it wasn't. Because if it was, if Deanna had been cursed that whole time and Caxton hadn't even noticed, if she'd failed Deanna that badly-

"This whole thing, all the pain and suffering, was about me. And if you had just tried to talk to me, if you had just stayed with me that night I hurt myself-we could have been-we could have done it together-"

"No!" Caxton shrieked. She just wanted it to stop. She wanted it all to stop. She pulled out the Glock 23 and fired her last three rounds into Deanna's chest, one two three.

The noise obliterated all words. If only for an instant.

Then Caxton looked down at what she'd done. The white silk dress was scorched and torn but the skin underneath wasn't even singed. Deanna was completely unhurt.

"Oh god-you've fed tonight," Caxton wailed.

"You're my girlfriend. You're supposed to want to be with me forever, no matter what! We're supposed to want the same things. Why is this so hard for you?"

The fingers on Caxton's shoulder compressed like an industrial vise. Caxton could hear the bones in her shoulder creak and start to pop.

"Don't you love me anymore?" Deanna demanded.