Laura Caxton Vampire

Arkeley nailed the last vampire, in a fight that nearly killed him. But the evidence proves otherwise. When a state trooper named Laura Caxton calls the FBI looking for help in the middle of the night, it is Arkeley who gets the assignment. Who else? He's been expecting such a call to come eventually. Sure, it has been years since any signs of an attack, but Arkeley knows what most people don't: that there is one left. In an abandoned asylum, she is rotting, plotting, and biding her time in a way that only the undead can. Caxton is out of her league on this case and more than a little afraid, but the Fed has made it plain that there is only one way out. The worst thing, though, is the feeling that the vampires want more than just her blood. They want her for a reason, one she can't guess … a reason her sphinxlike partner knows but won't say … a reason she has to find out-or die trying. Now there are only thirteen bullets between Caxton and Arkeley and the vampires. There are only thirteen bullets between us, the living, and them, the damned. "There is plenty of gripping, fast-paced action and enough carnage here to delight the hearts of horror buffs."

Laura Caxton vowed never to face them again. The horror of what the vampires did is too close, the wounds too fresh. But when Jameson Arkeley, broken and barely recognizable, comes to her with an unfathomable, unholy discovery, her resolve crumbles. Arkeley leads Caxton to a tomb in Gettysburg recently excavated by a local archaeology professor. While the town, with its legendary role in the Civil War's worst battle, is no stranger to cemeteries, this one is remarkably, eerily different. In it lie 100 coffins-99 of them occupied by vampires, who, luckily, are missing their hearts. But one of the coffins is empty and smashed to pieces. Who is the missing vampire? Does he have access to the 99 hearts that, if placed back in the bodies of their owners, could reanimate an entire bloodthirsty army? How did the vampires end up there, undisturbed and undiscovered for 150 years? The answer lies in Civil War documents that contain sinister secrets about the newly found coffins-secrets that Laura Caxton is about to uncover as she is thrown into a deadly, gruesome mission of saving an entire town from a mass invasion of the undead. "Wellington keeps the pace brisk, alternating action-packed chapters set in the present with chapters cast credibly in the form of extracts from period journals, letters and dispatches that gradually reveal the origin and intent of the vampire regiment and its enigmatic leader, Alva Griest. The taut narrative never slackens, providing thrilling entertainment for readers who like their horror raw and bloody." "Awesomely scary. I couldn't put it down because I was afraid to close my eyes!" "Great to see a book that has creepy vampires. It makes a good change from the glut of sexy vamp books out there."

US Marshal Jameson Arkeley, the country's foremost authority on vampires, taught police investigator and vampire fighter Laura Caxton everything she knows about monsters. After a bloody war visited upon Gettysburg by an army of vampires, Arkeley gave up his own life to save others-except he didn't exactly die. Arkeley accepted the curse and is now a vampire himself. What's worse, he's the savviest vampire ever; he knows all the tricks better than anyone. Caxton is now faced with the task of destroying her former mentor. But Arkeley knows all her tactics too; after all, he taught them to her. Caxton realizes she must finish Arkeley before he succeeds in his quest to exterminate his own family. But even more important, she has to prevent him from becoming a beast exponentially more dangerous: a vampire zero.

When vampire hunter Laura Caxton is locked up in a maximum-security prison, the cop-turned-con finds herself surrounded by countless murderers and death-row inmates with nothing to lose and plenty of time to kill. Caxton's always been able to watch her own back-even when it's against a cellblock wall. But soon she learns that an even greater threat has slithered behind the bars to join her. Justinia Malvern, the world's oldest living vampire, has taken up residence, and her strength grows by the moment as she raids the inmate population like an all-you-can-drink open bar of fresh blood. The crafty old vampire knows just how to pull Caxton's strings, too, and she's issued an ultimatum that Laura can't refuse. Now Laura has just 23 hours to fight her way through a gauntlet of vampires, cons, and killers. "Smooth…Wellington's deadpan humor enlivens the satirical goth-gore proceedings as Laura battles the half-dead and their evil leader." "Strange as it may seem, the key to good supernatural fiction is realism. Readers have to believe in the world that has been created in order to suspend their disbelief of the creatures set loose in it, and Wellingtonexcels here…This could easily have dissolved into B-movie stereotype but instead seems intensely researched and utterly believable. The characters are likewise fully formed and consistent…Wellington's voice continues to grow. Highly recommended for horror and vampire fiction fans."