Bite Club mv-10

by Rachel Caine

  And there was no way Michael would be able to stop her.

  He didn’t have to. Eve was fumbling at the pocket on the side of her über-Goth dress, and I saw a flash of silver a second before she plunged it under her arm, across her own body, and into Gloriana’s chest.

  “Damn,” I said. Because she must have gotten it right, first try—no easy thing, even when you’re facing a vampire and able to see your target.

  Gloriana went down, dragging Eve with her. Her mouth was open in a silent scream, and her eyes were bright and red and running over with fury. She was still trying to close her hand and crush Eve’s windpipe.

  Michael lunged forward and slammed the silver stake down harder into Glory’s chest, all the way in, for all I know, all the way into the cement floor beneath her. Then he dragged Eve away and put his arms around her and held on like the world might be coming apart, but the two of them never would.

  It was kind of beautiful.

  And I watched Gloriana—the prettiest vampire I’d ever seen, and the most dangerous—go still and quiet as the silver began to burn and discolor her body, killing her from the inside out.

  She was all done.

  I let just a little bit of the rage back out. Just a little, and felt it evaporate into a warm, scary satisfaction.

  And God, it felt good.

  “Shane?”

  Claire hadn’t seen what had happened for the past few seconds—too many running, screaming people, and she’d lost sight of Eve. When the chaos thinned a little she saw Eve sitting on Michael’s lap on the concrete. And Gloriana lying next to them, staked half into the floor. Silver, Claire realized. She was well on her way to totally deceased.

  And Claire decided she couldn’t care too much about that. What she did care about was that Michael and Eve were okay, and that Shane was still standing inside the cage, staring out at Glory’s dying body. He looked…blank, except for his eyes. They were full of something hot and wild and strange, and then…peaceful.

  Myrnin was still hanging on to her. “Hey!” she said, and shook her arm to try to throw him off. “Let go already! I’m fine!”

  He was frowning and trying to look everywhere at once. “I think we should leave,” he said. “I can easily break a hole in the bricks over there. Yes, we should go now. See, your boy is fine. Everything’s fine. Except Glory, obviously—that’s definitely not fine—but honestly, do any of us care? I certainly don’t.”

  “Let go!”

  “No,” Myrnin said. “You’re my responsibility. And this is dangerous. I don’t know where Bishop is, and until we find him, I don’t want you on your own.”

  Claire threw down the black bag she was holding, reached in, and came out with a thin, silver-plated knife. “You know what’s dangerous?” she asked. “Me. If you don’t let go.”

  He sighed, rolled his eyes, and released her. She snatched up the bag and ran for the cage, bouncing off panicking strangers and a few people she actually knew who’d come to bet on her boyfriend dying in a cage—God, she wanted to hit them—and then made it to the steps that led up to the big, square cage. The fight cage.

  With Shane.

  Shane looked over as she pounded up the risers and flew like a bird into his arms. It felt like the best thing she’d ever done, putting her arms around him, feeling his warm, damp skin pressed against her.

  He let out a long, wordless breath and collapsed against her, hugging her like the world was ending, like he never wanted to let her go again. “I’m a fool,” he said. “And an asshole. You ought to run as far away from me as you can. I am so sorry.”

  “If I run, you run with me,” she said. “Are you all right?”

  He held up his right hand. It looked red and a little swollen. “Broken bone,” he said. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

  She took his hand in both of hers, cradling it, and put it gent ly to her cheek. He was staring at her with a hungry expression, one that seemed to her to be more about hope than anything else.

  “Just like that,” he said. “Just like that, you’re going to let it go. All the things I did. What I said. God, Claire…”

  “Uh, no, idiot,” Claire said. “You’re going to have to work for forgiveness. But this…this you get for free. Because I love you.”

  He smiled a little and then he kissed her, and for a few long, sweet, breathless seconds, it was all okay again.

  And then Claire heard the sirens.

  “The hell?” Shane said, because it wasn’t just a siren. It was a chorus of them, wailing over each other in waves. Every siren in town, it sounded like, all heading toward them.

  Claire felt a sick surge of understanding, which became even more clear when Myrnin came up the stairs to join them inside the cage, took her by the upper arm, and said, “And now we are going. No arguments. Amelie and Oliver are coming, and they’re bringing as much overwhelming force as is available to them. If you want to maintain your body, soul, and freedom, stop dwithering and come. No one in this room will be safe once they arrive. They’re very much in a shoot-first, ask-questions-never mood.”

  “Dwithering?” Claire repeated blankly. “What is—?”

  “Must we argue word choice? Now?”

  “Nope,” Shane said. “We’re with you. And we’re going.”

  And they would have been, except that as Myrnin turned and headed for the open iron gate, someone else came up the steps and blocked the opening.

  Bishop. Impossibly, he looked even younger than he had on the video, like he was aging in reverse. There was fresh blood on his mouth and smeared on the collar of his shirt. His eyes were ancient and vicious and pretty much crazy, Claire thought, as he smiled with his fangs out and said, “Let them come. My daughter thought she could starve me, wall me up, make an example of me. I’ll make such an example of this roomful of people—no, this entire town—that no one will ever say its name again without shuddering. The nightmare is coming now. Wake up and enjoy it.”

  Myrnin stared at Bishop in outright horror and backed up fast. He let go of Claire. In fact, he put her and Shane in the way.

  “What’s the matter, my old friend?” Bishop asked. He calmly reached back, grabbed the door, and slammed it closed behind him with a rattle and boom of metal. Then he bent the frame so that it wouldn’t open—more effective than a lock. “No clever plans? No silly games? Because you know I haven’t forgotten what you did when you betrayed me. You know I’ll take you apart one piece at a time…fingers and toes first, then working my way in. And your little humans here, they’re only a moment’s work. By the time Amelie and her court reach us, I’ll be drinking their blood out of your skull.”

  “You could still run,” Claire said. She couldn’t believe she had enough strength to talk, but she did. She was scared, but not that scared. Somehow, after everything she’d seen, Bishop wasn’t the worst anymore. “You could break out of a wall and disappear in the confusion. You know if Amelie catches you, she’ll kill you.”

  “Indeed, I think Oliver’s quite convinced her that making an example of me is bad strategy,” Bishop said. He paced side to side, but every turn closed the distance between them. “I expect she’ll execute me instantly. Or try. But I’m better at this than they are, either of them or all of them. I am the best killer who ever lived.”

  “Yeah, you don’t seem too worried,” Shane said.

  “I had a great deal of time to consider my place in this world, while she had me sealed up in that tiny, airless hell. Nothing to eat. Nothing to hear or feel or touch. Just endless, dark eternity. Do you know what I decided?”

  Shane shook his head. Claire realized she was still holding the small, silver-coated knife, and now she nudged the black bag closer to Shane, who glanced down at it.

  “I realized that if I can survive that, survive being starved down to bones, I can survive Amelie’s worst,” Bishop said. “I don’t need Vassily and Gloriana. I thought I needed an army to take this town, and they were making me one—humans like you, Sh
ane, who’d take out vampires without flinching. But I don’t need them. Or you. Any of you.” His eyes flared blood red. “Except as fuel.”

  Shane crouched down and reached inside the bag, pulling out a crossbow, but it wasn’t set. It would take seconds to cock and load, and Bishop wasn’t going to give it to them.

  Bishop smashed the crossbow into splinters with one blow, and threw Shane headfirst into the bars.

  Claire screamed, because it should have killed him…and probably would have, if he hadn’t been dosed up with that drugged sports drink Vassily had given the fighters. Instead, it only stunned him. Shane collapsed to the floor, moaning, and tried to get up. Bishop kicked him twice: once in the stomach, once in the head.

  Claire didn’t think. She threw herself at him, and when his strong, pale hands reached for her to rip her open, she slashed with the silver knife she held. She didn’t know what she cut off, but Bishop howled and backed away from her. Then he came for her.

  Shane couldn’t get up, but he could roll, and he did, right in front of Bishop’s feet as he moved. Bishop fell, twisted, and grabbed Shane’s head in his mangled hands.

  Claire tried to stop him, but couldn’t get close enough. She slashed with the knife and delayed him from snapping Shane’s neck, but it was useless; she couldn’t get to him, not without getting killed, too.

  That was what Bishop wanted. To kill one of them while the other watched.

  “Hey!” Eve shouted, just on the other side of the bars. She had something in her hand, something long and thin and sharp. “Heads up, CB!” It came flying at her, and Claire grabbed it.

  It was a sword. One of those things Eve had used against Oliver. She’d gotten a touch on him with it.

  This one had a point, not a button, and the edges were sharp on all three sides of the triangular blade.

  Claire grabbed the handle and threw herself into a lunge. It probably wasn’t a good lunge, probably wasn’t steady, but it was fast.

  And she stuck the point straight into Bishop’s throat.

  He let go of Shane and clawed at the sword. Claire dropped it and grabbed Shane’s ankle, and dragged him back to the other side of the cage. She raced forward, but Bishop got the blade before she did. Shane tried to get up, but failed.

  Claire was the only one still standing up.

  Myrnin. What the hell was he doing? He was down on the floor, rummaging around in his bag, ignoring her, ignoring their mortal danger. Stupid, cowardly idiot……

  Claire couldn’t even look at him—she didn’t have time, because Bishop swished the blade through the air with a noise like tearing silk, and he gave Claire a long, slow smile.

  “This will take approximately ten seconds,” he said. “I’d like to make it last, but, alas, my daughter awaits. I have a whole town to destroy. I can’t take as much time with you as I’d prefer.”

  He took a step toward her.

  “Claire,” Myrnin said from behind her. He sounded preoccupied and actually quite calm. “Please fall down now, if you don’t mind.”

  She had absolutely no reason to trust him, but she did. She just…did.

  She hit the canvas and looked up. Myrnin stood over both her and Shane, straight and tall, and there was a wild-looking shotgun kind of thing in his hands, and his Nike bag lay on its side at his feet. He was pointing the gun directly at Bishop.

  “Now,” he said, “you appear to have brought the wrong weapon, Bishop. Surrender?”

  Bishop buried the sword in Myrnin’s chest in a move so incredibly fast, Claire didn’t even see it happen.

  Myrnin didn’t flinch. He pulled both triggers.

  The heavy boom rattled the bars of the cage around them, and for a second Claire thought that something had gone wrong, very wrong, because the air was thick with smoke and glitter and Bishop was still there.

  He fell, clawed fingers tearing long furrows in the canvas only an inch or so from Shane’s face. He was burning, burning fast, all over. It looked like he’d been hit with napalm, and he screamed and rolled and kept on burning while Myrnin calmly reached down, pulled the sword out of his chest, and reloaded the shotgun.

  “That hurt,” he said. “But not, I imagine, as much as this will.” He aimed and then stopped himself. He looked at Claire. “Perhaps it would be best if you took your boyfriend outside for this.”

  Claire swallowed. “It’s locked.”

  Myrnin walked over and slammed his booted foot into the cage door. The hinges bent and cracked. His second kick sent it flying off the hinges to crash down five feet away, with a sound like tin cans dropping off a roof.

  “Out,” he said, and stepped aside as Claire grabbed Shane and the two of them jumped over Bishop’s convulsing body.

  Outside, Claire turned to look. Myrnin went back to Bishop and aimed at the center of the downed vampire’s chest.

  Bishop bared his bloody teeth. He was disintegrating, pieces of him melting off in a horrible mess. The pain must have been extreme.

  “You don’t have the courage,” he spat, and then coughed up rivers of too-pale blood. “You never have, shadow hugger. Get the little girl to do your work for you. She’s braver than you ever were.”

  Myrnin raised his eyebrows and stared down at him, then flipped the shotgun up and rested it against his shoulder. “Oh, I think that’s probably true,” he said. “And I think I’d like to tell Amelie you went slowly and in pain. Die on your own, you evil old animal.”

  It took a long, agonizing minute. Bishop never screamed. He left behind a skeleton that slowly collapsed into ash in the middle of the cage.

  Myrnin sagged and leaned against the bars, head down. Claire came back up the steps and reached through to touch his shoulder. “Why didn’t you?” she asked.

  For answer, Myrnin aimed the gun at Bishop’s disintegrating bones and fired both barrels.

  Nothing happened. Just a dry, empty click.

  “I realized that I never loaded the pellets into the cartridges,” he said. “Those should have been round, silver buckshot.”

  “But you knew that first thing would work.”

  “Actually,” Myrnin said in a low, confidential voice, “I thought I’d forgotten to load those shells, too. See how it all worked out?”

  There was a massive banging on the outer doors, sending the people running around into a freak-out panic. Myrnin sighed, pushed away from the bars, and followed Claire down the stairs. She grabbed hold of Shane’s unbroken hand and held tight, and the three of them found Eve and Michael, still sitting next to Glory’s badly burned body. Only her golden hair was left, and even that was flecked with ash and slowly crisping.

  “Follow me,” Myrnin said. “And do stay together. And by the way, this is the last time I go anywhere with you people. You are all insane.”

  He picked up an iron bar and slammed it into the wall about half a dozen times in the space of seconds, and the bricks flew out in a haze of dust and splinters.

  Claire and Shane stepped through the hole together, and froze as guns turned toward them. A whole lot of cops were yelling for them to freeze, and they did, putting up their hands and leaning up against the wall to be searched and handcuffed.

  Claire looked back. Amelie and Oliver were in the next row, behind the cops, along with ranks and ranks of vampires. Amelie was staring straight ahead with a blank, empty expression; Oliver, on the other hand, was smiling. He was giving orders, sending one set of vamps that way, one up top, one around the side…the general deploying his troops, while the queen waited in icy isolation for victory.

  Myrnin stepped out of the hole in the wall, glared balefully at the police, and waved to Amelie with demented excitement. “Hello! Your dear father is unfortunately very dead,” he called. “And you said my dispersal system would never work!”

  Amelie blinked and focused on him. “What did you say?” she called.

  “Dead,” he said, clearly and distinctly. “Your esteemed forebear is no more. He is dust and angel tears, though I sh
ouldn’t think any of us will be mourning him for long. You may see for yourself, but I will swear to you that it is, indeed, your unlamented Mr. Bishop. Now could you please ask these idiots to stop pointing their bullets at me? It’s terribly wasteful.”

  Claire tried to keep from laughing, but it turned into a choking cough, and then Shane started laughing, too, and suddenly it was all right.

  Amelie swept past them, making for the hole they’d come out of; Oliver hurried to dart in front of her, holding what looked like an actual old-fashioned broadsword. Claire supposed that in the world of vampire wars, a sword could be pretty useful, especially with a silver edge. Beheading always worked.

  Michael and Eve came out after a few more seconds, and Eve looked around and saw Shane and Claire in their almost-arrested poses. She snorted. “Leave it to you two,” she said. “What is it with you and cages, Shane?” It must have occurred to Eve a second later that maybe that might not have been cool to say at the moment. But Shane just shrugged.

  “If Amelie wants to throw me back in jail, it’s okay. I did sign on for the fighting. I did beat a couple of vamps pretty bad. And I could have hurt Michael.”

  Michael leaned against the wall next to him, arms folded. He was wearing the stupid hat—now at least fifty percent stupider, thanks to being crushed by running feet—and the ratty trench coat, but under the shade, his smile was full-on smug. “Sorry. What did you say? You could have hurt me?”

  “Dude, I was kicking your ass.” It occurred to Shane, Claire guessed, that maybe he shouldn’t have been quite so proud of it. “Which is why I’m sorry.”

  “I wasn’t even trying, Shane.”

  “Yeah, I know. But…” Shane fell silent.

  Now Michael stopped smiling and looked at him for a long few seconds. He nodded and stepped away. “We’ll talk about it later,” he said. “And, yeah, you will be sorry. You know that.”

  “Oh, I know,” Shane said. “You have no idea how sorry I already am.”

  But Claire did. She saw the look in his eyes and the shine of tears.

  And the shame.