23 Hours: A Vengeful Vampire Tale

46.

For a while it was all Clara could do to stay on her feet. Queenie was dragging her along by one arm and didn’t mind twisting it whenever Clara stumbled or slowed down, even for a second.

Guilty Jen’s set moved quickly and silently. She’d trained them well. They had their marching orders—follow Jen—and they didn’t need additional supervision. Clara shuddered to think what they would be capable of if they did manage to escape from the prison. She was a cop, of sorts. Enough to know that a cop’s worst nightmare is not some raving killer on the loose or a drugged-out maniac with a machine gun. It was a well-organized group of criminals with a leader smart enough to know exactly how to operate on the wrong side of the law and get away with it. A killer on a rampage could do a lot of damage in one night before he was inevitably gunned down, but a smart gang could do immeasurable amounts of harm over a period of years before they were caught.

When she managed to get her feet properly under her and match her stride with Queenie’s, she knew what her next duty was. “You’re making a mistake,” she said, calling out to Guilty Jen, knowing she was asking for trouble. She needed to do something, though, needed to make a case for Laura no matter how pointless it seemed. “You’re letting the warden lead you around by the nose. Do you really think she has your best interests at heart? And killing Caxton won’t gain you anything right now. It won’t get you out of here any—”

The set stopped instantly as Guilty Jen froze in front of a doorway. Slowly she turned and glared at Clara. “I’m the only thing keeping you alive right now,” she said. “It would be easier, and safer, to kill you, got it? I’m about ninety-eight percent ready to do it with my bare hands. I’m not at one hundred percent because there just might come a time in the next couple of minutes when you’ll be useful to me alive. The thing of it is, it don’t matter much if you’re alive and able to walk, or just alive. I know exactly how to kick you in the back so that your spinal cord would snap. You believe me?”

Clara nodded. She couldn’t have spoken at that moment if her life had depended on it. She was pretty sure her life depended on not speaking, which was fortunate.

“I can leave you in a wheelchair for the rest of your life, and it’ll only take me about ten seconds to do it. Queenie, Feather-wood, and Maricón could carry you from here—you ain’t that heavy. Caxton would still want you, even if you were a useless cripple. Now, we’ll move a little faster with you on your own feet, so I’m giving you one more chance. But you say another word and we’ll take a nice little ten-second pit stop. Okay?”

Clara nodded again.

“Good. Move, now.” Guilty Jen pulled open the door in front of her and they flowed out into the yard. Clara was shocked by how dark it seemed. The sun was still above the horizon, but it was below the level of the prison’s walls and long shadows were draping the grounds in gloom.

They headed around the side of a low outbuilding. Judging by the number of pipes sticking out of its walls, it must have been the control center for the prison’s water supply. Feather-wood dashed up to one corner of the structure and peered around its side for a second, then flashed a hand signal back to the rest of them to say the way ahead was clear.

This couldn’t be the fastest way to the central tower. Clara remembered the route Guilty Jen had taken before, and this was a far more roundabout path. She wasn’t surprised by that, however. Guilty Jen was smart enough to know that the warden might be laying a trap for them, and so she was taking an alternate route to throw off anyone who might be lying in wait for them.

It wasn’t much farther to the Hub. They passed around the side of a softball diamond and then entered a covered walkway that led back to the central tower. Long before they reached it Clara started hearing a noise. A repetitive, metallic, hammering kind of noise, as if someone were dropping rocks off a high place onto a corrugated tin roof. She wasn’t the only one who heard it, either.

“Sounds like some artillery in there,” Queenie said. “Sounds automatic. Big caliber, too.”

Guilty Jen nodded. “It might be Caxton. Maybe she got into the hogs’ toy box.”

“We ain’t got any guns,” Maricón pointed out. “I ain’t sure about this—”

One look from Jen shut the woman up.

“We’re going in,” Guilty Jen said. “You know the drill.”