The two of them had gone to a lot of funerals together in the previous two months. Gettysburg had been a success from one point of view—from the point of view of the local tourism board. The civilian population of the town had survived, because Caxton had them evacuated the day before the fighting began. From a law enforcement perspective it had been a fiasco. Local cops, SWAT officers from Harrisburg, even kids from the National Guard, had died by the dozens. They had laid down their lives to keep the vampires from getting out into the general population. More than one family had sent Caxton hate mail after that, but she had made a point of going to every funeral she could. This one was a little different. No, it was a lot different.
They didn’t talk much on the way to Centre County. Laura found herself nodding off and then jerking back to wakefulness every time she got near to real sleep. It was a familiar feeling, if not a welcome one. Before they reached State College Clara pulled off of the highway and took them deep into a zone of high ridges and dead fields, brown and golden and slathered with snow. They passed weathered farmhouses and barns that looked like they’d been hit by bunker-?busting bombs, some of them slumped over on their sides. They passed a herd of unhappy-?looking cows, and then Clara turned off once again, onto a dirt path that was easy to miss if you didn’t know where to find it. They pulled up in front of a farmhouse that looked in better shape than most, with a well-?kept barn and a silo hung with hex signs. The Polders were waiting outside for them. Urie Polder, still wearing his Caterpillar baseball cap, had put a black parka over his stained white T-?shirt. It hid most of his wooden arm, but not the three twiglike fingers that stuck out the end of the sleeve. He used them to scratch at his freshly shaven cheek and Laura saw them move, as prehensile as human fingers. That weird hand was actually stronger and more deft than his normal one. Vesta Polder was dressed in the same dress she always wore, a long-?skirted black sheath that buttoned all the way up her neck and down her wrists. Her wild blond hair was pinned back, though, and she wore a black veil that completely obscured her face. They were the strangest people Laura had ever met, but they had also proved themselves good friends. When the car stopped, Urie gestured back at the house with his wooden hand and the door opened. A little girl, maybe twelve years old, came racing out. She wore a smaller version of Vesta’s dress but her blond hair was covered by a white lace bonnet. Her eyes were very wide. Laura was a little shocked. She’d known for some time the Polders had a daughter, but she’d never actually been introduced to her. As the couple settled into the backseat of the car, the girl perching on her mother’s lap, Urie cleared his throat noisily and then said, “This here’s Patience, she’s a good girl, ahum.”
“It’s very nice to meet you, Patience,” Clara said, leaning over the back of the driver’s seat. “I’m Clara and this is Laura.”
“Yes’m, I know ye both,” the girl said. “The cards showed ye. You’re the lover, and she’s the killer.”
Laura’s lip curled back in a sneer. It wasn’t how she’d expected this meeting to go. She looked at Vesta, but the older woman didn’t correct or even tsk her daughter.
“I suppose that’s accurate,” Clara said, refusing to be taken aback. She looked at Urie. “Maybe this isn’t my place, but I’m not sure this is going to be appropriate for a little girl. Couldn’t you get a sitter?”
Urie Polder grinned broadly. “Little Patience ain’t been under the care of no one else, not since she was born. We don’t look to break that streak now.”
“Oh,” Clara replied. Without another word she put the car in gear and got them back in the road. The funeral was to take place in a cemetery outside of Bellefonte—not much farther away. They passed the main campus of Penn State, then rolled into the quaint little Victorian town. The road took them along the shore of a frozen pond ringed with gazebos and houses decorated with gingerbread-?like carvings. Laura always thought the town looked like the kind of place where a parade might spontaneously break out, with a full brass section and prom queens in the backseats of open cars. It was a glimpse of Pennsylvania the way it had been decades earlier, back before the coal mines all dried up and the steel mills closed down, unable to compete with foreign production. The Pennsylvania her grandparents had grown up in.
Arkeley had once had a house in Bellefonte. It had been his base of operations for nearly twenty years. Now he was going to be memorialized in the same town.
The cemetery, just outside town, was a vast expanse of rolling yellow hills, the dead grass sparkling with frost even so late in the morning. Most of the snow had melted or been removed from the plots. Clara had downloaded driving instructions from the cemetery’s website, and she steered them confidently through endless lanes lined with obelisks and family crypts. Smaller, more modest gravestones stuck up in neat rows. She drove them deeper into a less populated region. A freshly washed pickup truck with an extended cab stood parked in the road and Clara took her spot behind it. Then the five of them clambered out and walked over the crunching grass to where three other people already waited for them. An older man, dressed in an outfit very similar to Urie Polder’s, but more threadworn around the knees of his jeans—and two young people, the age of college students. Arkeley’s children.
Vampire Zero
Chapter 5.