Part 5 (1/2)
”Then why would you say things like that to somebody? G.o.dd.a.m.nit, Arkeley!”
He cleared his throat. ”I took the time to play this little game with you because I need to train you out of the habit of bulls.h.i.+tting me, Trooper. You may talk about being a soldier of the law all you like. You may say you want to help me. It's completely immaterial. You're in this car for only one reason.”
A metallic blue Honda shot past them going at least ninety and stopped him from finis.h.i.+ng his sentence. The unmarked patrol car rocked on its shocks with the near collision and Caxton slapped her horn. The Honda slowed down just enough to pull right in front of them, dangerously close.
”What the h.e.l.l?” she demanded, and hit the horn again. She took her foot off the gas completely and went for the brake. Another car, a Chevrolet Cavalier that desperately needed a car wash, came up on her left. It matched her speed. As she tried to slow down, the Chevy's driver copied her. In the rear-view mirror she saw a third car coming up from behind. They were boxing her in. She glanced across at the driver of the Chevy just as he looked at her. His face was torn to ribbons.
”They're following me-they were at my house and now they're following me,” Caxton said. In the rear-view she saw her undead pursuer drift ever closer toward the b.u.mper of her patrol car.
”I doubt it,” Arkeley told her. ”Hold on.” The car behind them-a Hummer2-smashed into them and the patrol car shrieked as metal tore into metal. The half-dead back there wasn't trying to make them crash. Caxton had enough experience with police pursuits to understand. The driver behind her was showing her the limits of the box. She sped up a little, keeping just inches away from the car boxing them in from the front, and whirled around in her seat to keep all three a.s.sailants in sight.
”They're not here for me?” she asked.
”No, I don't think so.” Arkeley took his weapon from its holster. ”When I took down Lares he was feeding his ancestors. He brought them blood. I did some more research and I found others who'd seen similar behavior. Vampires
l.u.s.t for blood, but they wors.h.i.+p the creatures who gave them the curse. When I threatened Malvern back in the hospital I brought this on us. Roll down your window and lean back.”
She did as he asked only a moment before he lurched across her body and fired two shots into the Chevy on her left. The half-dead driver threw his hands across his face but they exploded in clouds of bone fragments and withered flesh. His head cracked and pulled apart and the car spun off the road and smacked into a tree. Caxton watched in her rear-view as its headlights swiveled out crazily, pointing in different directions, a moment before they went dark.
From behind the Hummer-2 rammed them again. The half-deads were not pleased. Caxton grabbed the steering wheel so hard she felt it in her shoulders. ”Okay, my turn,” she said. She spun the wheel and stamped on the gas. The patrol car shot forward and smacked into the rear right wheel of the Honda in front of them. The tire slipped on the pavement and the car spun out to the left, letting Caxton surge forward and around the out-of-control vehicle. She'd had three days training in pursuit evasion tactics-everyone in Highway Patrol had to take it. As she sped into the darkness ahead, finally free of the box, she turned to grin at Arkeley, truly pleased with herself. ”Do you know how to use the car radio?” she asked him, gesturing at the dashboard set with her chin. ”Go ahead and call Troop H dispatch. We need every available unit.”
Arkeley stared at her. ”You little idiot,” he breathed. She didn't look at him, just focused on keeping control of the car. She was doing better than ninety on a road rated for sixty at the most. ”If we had let them, they would have taken us right to their master.”
”To the vampire,” she said.
”Yes.”
”But you shot that guy!” she protested.
”I had to make it look like we weren't just playing along.”
Caxton gritted her teeth and glanced in her mirrors. The Hummer was still back there, laboring to keep pace with her. She eased off the gas a hair-not enough to make him think she was letting him catch up. The Honda was still trying to get turned around after its sudden stop. A green traffic sign flashed by. ”The exit for New Holland is coming up. Do I take it or not?”
”We'll have to try to guess from their behavior which way they want us to go.” Arkeley bit off the words and spat them out. He was holding on to the door handle with one hand while the other held his weapon up, barrel pointed up. If the bouncing, jostling car made him fire by accident the bullet would exit the car as quickly as possible. ”If he starts to weave to the left-”
He didn't need to finish the sentence. Two motorcycles came screaming up the on-ramp behind them and rumbled quickly up behind the patrol car. The riders weren't wearing helmets but then they didn't have any faces either. One of the half-dead riders pulled up on the right of Caxton, forcing her into the left lane, away from the New Holland exit. At least that answered her question. The other motorcyclist gunned his engine with a sustained explosive noise and pulled up next to her front left wheel.
The motorcycles weren't much of a threat on their own-she could ram them off the road with one swivel of her wheel. The one on her right, though, had a big rusty hunk of metal in his hand, a cleaver, at least eighteen inches long. He brought it back with his arm straight and then swung it right into the side of the car. There was more noise than damage to the car's body but her right-hand headlight flickered out in a shower of sparks and she was half blind, hurtling through the Stygian woods at eighty-five miles an hour. Reflexively, even as he was pulling his cleaver free, she swerved to the left to get away from him. The biker on that side swung out wide and narrowly missed getting clipped by her front left wheel. Gla.s.s and bits of metal smacked and skittered and danced across the winds.h.i.+eld as the patrol car rocked up and down on its shock absorbers and the wheels slipped away from her.
Caxton struggled to regain control of the car. Her remaining headlight washed the road surface from left to right as the car sagged on its tires but she was good at this, she'd had years of practice driving under hazardous conditions, and she didn't panic. She straightened the car out and poured on a little more speed. Maybe the Hummer would have trouble keeping up but she figured the bikers knew where they were taking her.
”Are you sure they're not trying to kill us?” Caxton demanded. ”Ninety per cent so,” Arkeley replied. ”Normally half-deads herd victims to the master. After all if we die out here the vampire can't drink our blood. Then again, if they think I'm enough of a threat they may not want to take any chances.”
”You're a known vampire killer,” Caxton said. ”If I were them I'd consider you a pretty serious threat. Please, please, please, can we call for some backup?”
He nodded. He didn't waste time suggesting that maybe she was right for once and maybe he was wrong. He picked up the radio handset and called it in, just like he should have ten minutes earlier. Dispatch from Troop H started calling in cars.
Then an orange sign flashed by them so fast she could barely see it, its phosph.o.r.escent paint glowing eerily in the near-total darkness. She didn't have a chance to read it but she knew what the color meant: road work ahead.
She took her foot off the gas. The Hummer behind her grew bigger in her rear-view but she tried not to sweat it. She had no idea what was coming -anything from a lane s.h.i.+ft to a complete road closure. She could feel panic rising in her chest.
The biker on her left had a monkey-wrench. He started to draw back his arm, clearly intending to smash in her remaining headlight. There were no streetlamps on this stretch of highway-this was a rural route where people