Product Description

In the next 23 hours, there will be no reprieve,
no mercy, and no time off for good behavior.

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 cell-block 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 open bar with an all-you-can-drink supply 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 . . . 23 hours to make one last, desperate attempt at protecting the world from Justinia’s evil.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #46522 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-23
• Released on: 2009-06-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780307452771
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

About the Author
DAVID WELLINGTON is the author of the Laura Caxton vampire series, including 13 Bullets, 99 Coffins, and Vampire Zero.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1.

The Marcy State Correctional Institution, in Tioga County, Pennsylvania, had been designed and built in the 1960s as a state-of-the-art facility for the rehabilitation and therapeutic treatment of adult female prisoners. The walls were painted bright but tasteful colors. The cells were spacious and airy and laid out on an open plan to improve social communication between the inmates. It had a psychiatric ward, a well-stocked library, three full-sized gymnasia, and 768 beds.

Forty years later, with a population of over 1,300, it always hovered one incident away from a full-blown riot. On March 7, that incident came when no one expected it—except those who had planned it out meticulously in advance.

Laura Caxton was at her usual spot in the cafeteria, over by the wall where she didn’t have to watch her back every second. She was eating soup. Everyone was eating soup—you didn’t order from a menu at Marcy, you sat down and waited for what they brought you, and then you ate it or you went hungry. She could look down the long length of her white Formica table and see women of every color and creed, but they all wore the same orange jumpsuit and they all were eating beef barley soup.

Her first indication that anything was wrong was when she heard a loud plunking noise and then a cry that was half the scream of an inmate scalded by splashing soup and half a chorus of barely suppressed giggles and curses.

Ten seats down, an overweight Latina woman was brushing soup off her face and her chest. A rock-hard dinner roll had been thrown into her soup bowl, hard enough to splatter the table and the inmates on both sides of her.

The inmate who had thrown the roll, a slimmer and younger woman, white, blond, glasses (Caxton made mental notes of everything she saw—it was an old habit, one that served her as well inside as it had in her life before), leaned back on the bench and gave an exaggerated shrug. “Sorry, bitch,” she said, laughing and turning away.

It had nothing to do with Caxton. She put her head down over her own soup and kept eating. She knew what to do if there was a problem. All the inmates had been drilled on what to do—you got up, went to the wall, and raised your hands above your head. The correctional officers would take it from there. She looked around, trying to find where the COs were. Three of them, wearing their regulation navy blue stab-proof vests and carrying batons, were over on the far side of the cafeteria, chatting among themselves. They weren’t paying enough attention, but Caxton knew better than to try to signal them.

The offended woman, the overweight Latina, rose stiffly from the table. No one stopped her, even though it was strictly forbidden to get up during meals. She didn’t look angry, particularly. She was breathing a little heavy, maybe. Without a word she grabbed the blond inmate and smashed her face against the table, shattering her glasses and breaking her nose with a sickening crunch. Then she pulled the blond’s head back again and slammed it down a second time.

That got the attention of the COs. The three of them split up and started working their way between the tables, moving carefully in case this was a setup. Before they’d covered half the distance someone had stabbed the big Latina with a sharpened toothbrush handle. Caxton saw it still sticking out of her side. She was pulling at it, trying to tear it free. Someone else had pulled the blond away from the table and had her down on the floor, either to protect her from further attack or just to kick her while she was down. Everywhere Caxton looked women were jumping up from the tables, grabbing their trays or reaching for concealed weapons, looking to defend themselves or to settle old scores while they had the chance.

Time to get to the wall, Caxton decided. She put down her plastic spoon and placed her hands on the table so she could slide out of the bench.

Before she was even halfway up, someone grabbed her ankles and yanked her downward, under the table. Caxton landed flat on her back with the breath knocked out of her lungs. The hands on her legs were like iron claws, digging into her skin. She was hauled down the length of the table past a double row of feet, all clad in the disposable slippers the inmates wore. Some of the feet kicked at her, maybe just on principle.

Her head smacked against a leg of the table and then she was pulled free and she was looking up at the ceiling. Hands—many hands—grabbed her and hauled her upright, then shoved her forward before she had a chance to see where she was headed. All she could hear was screaming, roaring, bellowing, the clatter of women being hit with trays, the noise of bodies hitting the floor. She smelled blood, but not from anywhere close by. Her face hit a door that yielded and swung open and she spilled through into the kitchens, where inmates with white aprons over their jumpsuits were clustered around the doors she’d just come through, all of them having tried to see at once through the tiny plastic windows.

“Get out of here, all of you,” someone said, kicking the doors open. One door slammed into Caxton’s side, making her wince. “Move this piece of shit out of view.”

Hands reached down and grabbed Caxton, hauled her deeper into the kitchen. She was rolled over on her side and then someone kicked her in the stomach. She hadn’t caught her breath yet and couldn’t ask any of the questions that occurred to her, couldn’t yell for help.

A tall, thin Asian woman knelt down next to Caxton and grabbed her lower lip. She yanked on it as if she might tear it off, and Caxton was forced to raise her head. The Asian woman had black tears tattooed underneath her eyes, four on one side, five on the other. Her hair stuck out from either side of her head in a long pigtail. “You’re Caxton, right? I’d hate to think we went to all this trouble and got the wrong cunt.”

Caxton didn’t answer. She didn’t see what good would come of doing so.

“That’s her,” someone else said. Someone standing behind the Asian woman. Caxton couldn’t see who the new voice belonged to—she didn’t dare break eye contact with her captor. “She’s a cop. Are you sure the pigs won’t—”

“Ex-cop now,” the Asian woman said. She didn’t smile. “The COs hate her more than we do, because she used to play for their team and then she fucked up.”

She turned back to Caxton. “I’m Guilty Jen. They call me that because there was another Jen on our dorm who used to tell the screws every night how innocent she was. If I’d tried that they would have laughed at me. I mean, just look at me. Guilty as fuck and it’s written all over my face.” She tapped the place below her left eye where there were only four tears. “Every time I finish a stint, I get a new one. Come next October, I get out and it’ll be number ten. See what I mean?”

Caxton tried to bring her knees up to protect her abdomen, but hands from behind grabbed her legs and pulled them back. Other hands grabbed her arms and her shoulders. Guilty Jen had a lot of friends.

“I don’t know you, ex-cop,” she said. She reached into the pocket of her coveralls and took out a cigarette lighter and a long iron nail. “I’ve got no history with you, and no beef. But as many times as I been inside, this is my first time at Marcy, and in here, now, I’m nobody. I need to make a name for myself all over again. Sucks, but that’s how we play. So I asked around and found out who’s tough in here, who people are afraid of. I got a pretty short list. Most of the names I could eliminate because they had serious protection. They were ganged up. But you—everybody hates you. Dyke ex-cop. No friends in here. I fuck you up and I’m looking at zero consequences, other than a couple days in a special housing dorm for violence.” She flicked on the lighter and held the point of the nail in the blue part of the flame.

“There are quicker ways to kill me,” Caxton managed to say. “I figure you only have about thirty seconds before the COs realize we’re in here.”

“Oh, I’m not going to go that far,” Guilty Jen said. “I’m just going to mark you. Put a J on you so you’re mine. You just lie there, stay quiet, this doesn’t have to go bad for you. Just tell me one thing?”

“What’s that?” Caxton asked, as Guilty Jen took the nail out of the flame. Its tip was scorched black by the flame.

“Left cheek, or right?”

2.

Caxton stared at the point of the hot nail. It was beginning to turn red. She knew if she didn’t struggle, if she let this woman brand her, she would be marked in more ways than showed on the skin. She would be giving the prison population a signal that she was weak, and vulnerable, and could be preyed upon.

There were a lot of women in SCI-Marcy who would be thrilled to get that sign from an ex-cop inmate. This would be only the first assault of many.

She waited until Guilty Jen flicked off the lighter and scooted forward on her knees, ready to bend down and place the nail against her face. She waited for a second longer, until she could feel the heat of it near her skin.

Then she twisted her wrists simultaneously, slipping them free of the hands that held her, and brought her hands around to smack Guilty Jen’s hand sideways. The nail went into the calf muscle of one of the women standing over Caxton. That woman howled and jumped in the air.

The hands on Caxton’s ankles slackened their grip, just a little. Caxton had been expecting that—it’s hard to pay attention when one of your friends is screaming in pain—and she capitalized...

Customer Reviews

Page turner but "eh?" overall
I'm a big Laura Caxton fan, she's an unusual reluctant hero that will NOT do anything to win in the end and that you have to admire. She's a good cop and she's saving the world, what's not to love?

I'm also a big David Wellington fan. His stories have detail but never drag and his characters usually manage to make great strides in their development without taking the long road there. Throw in vampires and I'm fully 100% on board.

The last three books in this series (13 Bullets, 99 Coffins, and Vampire Zero) are great, I was itching to know what happened next in Laura's story. However, this fell a little short in my opinion. It's not a throw away book or even filler, I just felt like I was reading a long segueway in a story, like at on any page there would be real meat and yet there never was. In the previous books, the stories advanced and the characters developed and some things wrapped up but not in this one, which is why I have to give it a "Eh?" rating.

Wellington loves a cliffhanger but I'm just not sure how the next book can't just be a rehashing on the same themes from this one, which is the first time I've ever felt that way about one of his stories.

I'll pick up the next one in the Caxton series, this book is a quick read and full of gore, there are interesting characters which is why I give it the 4 stars - I just feel like it's missing something.

Wellington just can't miss...
23 Hours, the 4th in the Laura Caxton vampire series, delivers again....just as every Wellington novel has. Quickly becoming one of the most consistent and prolific young horror writers out there, Wellington doesn't ease up one bit with 23 Hours. Super fast pace, page gripping action....and plenty of gore (of course),
And it appears there is more to come....

Fourth Book of an Unbelievable Vampire Series!
This fourth book follows Laura Caxton vampire hunter as she is confined to a prison term. After everything she did to save everyone in the last three books, Laura gets sent to prison. Very original story of trying to survive in a no-win situation. What happens when Vampires take over a prison population? I don't want to give too much of the story away so I will only say that I really enjoyed the story. I read it in one day, and I could not put it down. The ending was my favorite part.