by Rachel Caine
Claire gasped, because Michael jumped up on the wall next to Naomi, scanned the graveyard, and fixed his gaze right where she was.
Naomi nodded. “Adieu, Claire. It’s too bad there will be no place for you in the Morganville we are to create.”
She left.
And then Michael jumped down and came at her.
Claire ran.
Michael wasn’t even trying hard, Claire thought; there was no real reason he couldn’t catch her within ten feet. He was very, very fast, and she wasn’t; the heavy leather coat she’d decided to wear was weighing her down, and so was the weapons bag. She wanted to leave it, but she didn’t dare.
Are you really going to try to kill him? she asked herself, and didn’t have any idea of the answer. She tripped over a fallen, tilted grave marker and went flying, rolled, and the canvas bag ripped open on a jagged piece of broken marble. The fabric was tough, but it had weakened along the zipper, and things spilled out through the gap…. The first one she laid hands on was a plastic Baggie full of random silver chain links, scavenged from old jewelry Eve had bought through the Internet. It made a nice, heavy handful as Claire opened it, and as she stumbled to her feet, she twisted and threw it at Michael.
The silver hit him, and where it struck skin, she saw sparks; it was more surprising than painful, but it slowed him down, giving her a moment to sort through her other available choices. She passed over the silver nitrate; she didn’t want to hurt him—she really didn’t.
Her hands closed on Shane’s silver-tipped baseball bat, which was the biggest thing in the canvas bag, and she yanked it out.
She didn’t even have time to prepare a decent swing as Michael lunged forward, but she did manage to get the coated end of the wood into place so that his momentum took him chest-first into it; the silver scorched him hard, and he veered off with a cry of pain.
Then it was a temporary standoff as Claire set her feet and took up a batter’s stance, ready and watching as he paced beyond her reach.
“Michael?”
He didn’t answer. His face looked as immobile and frozen as that of the marble angel behind him.
“Michael, please don’t do this. I know this isn’t your fault; Naomi’s using you. I don’t want to hurt you. I swear….”
“Good,” he said. “That makes it easy.”
“But I will!” she finished, and took a swing at his knees as he came into reach. He jumped over the bat, landed lightly, and sprang for her with hands outstretched.
Something hit him in the neck with a soft, coughing hiss, and Michael landed off-balance, staggered, and shook his head in confusion. There was something sticking out of his neck.
A dart.
He pulled it out, looked at it in confusion, and turned away from Claire, toward the wall…and sitting on top of it, with a heavy rifle in his hands, was Shane Collins.
“Sorry, man,” Shane said. He kicked free and dropped off the wall, flexing his knees and loading another dart into the tranquilizer gun. He aimed as he walked toward them. “You’re going to feel real damn bad for a while. Don’t make me hit you again. I’m not sure it won’t kill you.”
Michael growled something, but he was already losing his ability to function; he went down to one knee, then pitched forward to his hands, and then slowly sank down on his side. His back arched in a silent scream.
Claire dropped the bat and tried to go to him, but Shane caught her by the waist and lifted her up to stop her. She kicked and twisted, but he held her. “You get close to him, he could finish the job,” he said. He slung her around and sent her stumbling well away from Michael, and from himself. “You came to get Myrnin. Go get him. I’ll cover you.”
There was still no hint of forgiveness in him, either for Claire or—as he looked at his fallen, suffering friend—for Michael. He was here to fulfill a duty as he saw it, and that was all.
But it was more than she’d ever expected. It was something.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Shane nodded, not meeting her eyes, and racked the second tranquilizer dart into place as he watched Michael writhe painfully on the ground.
Claire raced over the uneven graves toward the white tree; even uncovered, the silver grate, circular with bars that formed a simple cross, was almost invisible until she nearly stepped onto it. That would have probably broken her ankle. The grate was locked in place with an old, rusted lock, and Claire whaled at it frantically with the silver-tipped bat until it broke in two.
She threw back the cold, tarnished metal and tried to see into the dark. Nothing. Not even a hint of life.
“Myrnin?” She shouted it down. She had to cover her nose from the smell that rose up from the narrow little hole—rot, sewage, mold, a toxic brew of the worst things she could imagine. “Myrnin! Can you hear me?”
Something thumped down on the ground next to her, and Claire looked up to see that Shane had tossed over a coil of nylon rope he’d retrieved from the weapons bag. She nodded and unwrapped it, tied off one end around the dead tree, and dropped the other down into the hole. “If you can hear me, grab the rope, Myrnin! Climb!”
She wasn’t sure for long moments whether he was there, or even whether he could get out. Maybe it was too late. Maybe he was already gone.
But then she felt the rope suddenly pull taut, and in seconds, she saw something pale appear in the dark below, gradually becoming clearer as it moved up toward her.
Myrnin climbed as if he’d learned how from his pet spider, swarming up with frantic speed. He had burns on his face and hands and lower legs, silver burns, but that didn’t slow him down, and when he reached the top of the hole, Claire grabbed his forearms and dragged him out on the side that wasn’t blocked by the raised silver grate.
He collapsed on his back, foul water bleeding out of his soaked and ruined clothes, out of his matted black hair, and after a second of silence he whispered, “I knew you’d come, Claire. I knew you would. Dear God, you took your time.”
She took his hand, and sat down next to him.
Shane was standing fifty feet away, beside Michael, but he looked up and jerked his chin in a silent question. Is he okay? She nodded.
It wasn’t much, she thought. It wasn’t anything to build any kind of hope upon, just that he was willing to show up here, willing to fire a rifle, throw her a rope.
But she’d take it. It was horrifying to her how pitifully grateful she was just for that smallest hint of a smile he gave her, before he turned his back.
“You’re very sad,” Myrnin said. He sounded faint and distant, as if he’d been a long way off in more ways than one. “You smell like tears. Did he break your heart?”
“No,” Claire said, in a very soft whisper that she hoped Shane couldn’t hear from where he stood. “I broke his.”
“Ah,” Myrnin said. “Good for you.” He sat up, and suddenly leaned over to throw up a horrifying amount of black water. “Pardon. Well, that was distressing…. Oh no…”
He collapsed back on the ground, as if too weak to rise, and shut his eyes tight. His whole body was shaking and twitching, and it went on for a horribly long time. She didn’t know what to do for him, except put her hand on his shoulder. Beneath the slimy clothes, she could feel his muscles locked and straining as if he were having an epileptic seizure.
He finally relaxed and took in a deep, slow breath before he opened his eyes and said, “We have to go, Claire. Quickly.”
“Where?” she asked, because she was cold and scared and couldn’t think of any place, any place at all, that might be safe now.
“To safety,” he said. “Before it’s too late.”
“But you—you’re not well enough to—”
Before she could finish, he was off stalking barefoot through the weeds toward the exit. He tore the chain off the fence with one hard pull and shoved the gates open with a rusted shriek.
Then he looked back with a red glow in his eyes and said, “Bring Michael. None of this is his faul
t. I won’t allow him to suffer for it.”
Shane hadn’t moved during all of this, but now he bent down and pulled the tranquilizer dart out of Michael’s neck. “It’s going to be a few minutes before he’s well enough to stand up.”
“Then drag him,” Myrnin said. “Unless you’d like to enjoy the comfort of my little oubliette. I’m sure Naomi will be sending Pennyfeather in a moment to be certain all of us are dead, and I’d rather not be here to oblige her. Now, children.”
He clapped his hands and disappeared beyond the gates, and in a moment, Claire heard Eve’s car start up with a roar.
She went back to Shane and took one of Michael’s arms as he grabbed the other. Their eyes met, briefly.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” he said. “Me, too.”
But she wasn’t sure if they were talking about the same things at all.
EIGHTEEN
CLAIRE
It took them a while to drag Michael’s heavy, unresponsive body over the uneven ground and out to the hearse. Myrnin stuck his head out of the passenger window of the hearse to helpfully suggest that Michael could be dumped down the same hole he’d just crawled out of. Shane suggested that Myrnin bite him, hard. Myrnin declined.
And Claire drove, leaving Shane with Michael, by his own request. She was a little anxious about that; Shane held grudges, and it was going to be hard for him to see past what Michael had done to them, but it was at least a truce for now. Mortal danger trumped emotional pain. Temporarily.
Myrnin said, “Michael seems to be under Naomi’s spell, just as Oliver and Pennyfeather must be. I have no idea how many she’s suborned, but it’s too bad she didn’t try it on me.” He smiled, and his expression was bleak and dark, and it wasn’t only the streaks of black water staining his face. “Greater vampires have tried, including her black-hearted father. I believe my blood made Bishop sick for a month.”
“Where should we go?” she asked. He sighed.
“I suppose we really have no choice,” he said. “Retreating to the Glass House will simply give them an easy point to attack, and we cannot defend the place, not from a concerted attack. So we will have to take the fight to them.”
“Where?”
He shrugged wearily. “To Amelie herself. Ultimately, she is Naomi’s target. Oliver’s seduction of her—or at least, part of it—was Naomi’s effort to weaken her, to stir up trouble against her. She must be warned of what’s to come or she’ll be taken unawares, by those she trusts.”
“How the hell are we supposed to get into Founder’s Square?” Claire asked. “Do you have some secret passage or something?”
“They’re all shut up, I’m afraid,” Myrnin said. “Oh, and I’m ruining your friend’s lovely upholstery. Sorry about the mess. Imagine if they’d left me down there for months. That did happen, once. I was dumped into a cell no larger than a doghouse for half a year. All they did was throw down the occasional chicken or hog…disgusting. I seem to have lost my slippers.”
“I’ll buy you new ones.”
“I expect we’re going to have to rely on Michael,” Myrnin said, switching suddenly back to the original question. “The boy has an automatic entrance to Amelie’s presence, as her offspring. The difficulty is that he’s hardly in a position to voluntarily assist us, and by the way, Shame, why did you shoot him?”
“It’s Shane, and if you call me that again, you’ll be getting the next dart.”
“The question still stands.”
“Because he was going after Claire. Again.” Shane didn’t look at her, not even a glance in the rearview mirror; Claire knew, because she was waiting for it—for some sign that his anger was starting to wear off.
“Again?” Myrnin asked, and his eyebrows rose. “My. Things change so quickly with you young people. Claire, are you enemies now with Michael?”
“Not exactly,” she said. Shane cut her off.
“Last time he just tongue-kissed her,” Shane said. “This time it looked a little more extreme than that. So I didn’t take the chance of being wrong.”
That earned her a sharp, interested look from Myrnin. “Well. We’ll have to have the full story, then.”
“We really don’t,” she said. “Something’s wrong with Michael, all right. And I saw Naomi, with Oliver. They’re working together.”
“That—is very, very unpleasant,” Myrnin said. He frowned and pulled at a stray thread on his shirt, threatening to unravel an entire piece of it. “Naomi was killed in the attack on the draug, or so it was said. I had my doubts. It seemed too convenient, considering that Naomi had begun working to undermine Amelie. I imagine she wanted to take her place even then, but Amelie’s not someone who fails to respond to a challenge.”
“You mean Amelie had Naomi killed?”
“Possibly. Or possibly Oliver did, to protect her. But if so, he must have had a change of heart, since, or Naomi secured control of him. I’ve never trusted the Roundhead, myself. A man of low character and high ambition. Naomi wouldn’t be above using him to achieve her dreams of ruling.”
“Then we have to tell Amelie he’s stabbing her in the back.” Claire took a deep breath. “You have to tell her. She won’t believe me, or Shane, and Michael’s not able to tell her anything, even if he wanted to.”
“I can’t,” he said. “Look at me. I’m in no fit state to—”
“You’re the official bearer of bad news,” Shane said, and pointed the rifle at Myrnin. “End of discussion.”
“Yes,” Myrnin said instantly. “Of course. No problem at all.”
There was quite a lot of animated debate about how to make it into the guarded area around Founder’s Square. In the end, they propped Michael up in the passenger seat, next to Myrnin, who held him upright with a friendly arm around his shoulders; when Claire rolled down the passenger window, the Founder’s Square vampire guard took one look inside, saw Michael and Myrnin, and nodded them through without any questions. “Amazing,” Myrnin said, squeezing rank water out of his hair. “You’d think someone might notice my general appearance.”
“Funny, I’d think you’d notice that it’s not that different from how you usually look,” Shane said. He hadn’t lowered the rifle; he sat braced in the back, aiming it generally in Myrnin’s direction.
“Really? I’ll have to work on that, clearly. Tell me, are you really so angry at Claire that you’re willing to fire that weapon in an enclosed vehicle, with a distinct chance of hitting her?”
“I’m not angry,” Shane said. “I’m careful.” That, Claire noticed, didn’t really answer the question at all.
It did shut Myrnin up for a while, at least until they’d parked the hearse in the underground lot of Founder’s Square. Shane was forced to leave the gun, but he grabbed Claire’s backpack and filled it with a selection of the handiest possible weapons.
“We’re not going to be able to fight our way in, or out again,” Myrnin said. “You might keep that in mind during your packing frenzy.”
“Shut up.” Shane put the backpack over his shoulder, and for the first time, looked at Claire directly. “He’s your responsibility. Keep him from doing anything too crazy.”
“I’ll try,” she said. It was the first real conversation—brief and businesslike as it was—that they’d had in hours, and it made her feel just a tiny bit less awful…until he turned his back on her in the elevator, in preference to watching the numbers flicker until they’d arrived at the right floor. Myrnin led the way, which was a good thing, because the first intersection brought them face-to-face with two of Amelie’s black-uniformed guards.
“We were told you left,” one of them said to Myrnin.
“You were ill-informed, then,” Myrnin said loftily, and drips of filthy water ran down his feet to leave stains on the carpet. “I’m here to see the Founder.”
“Like that?” The guard gave him an up-and-down look, eyebrows raised.
“Would you like me to shower and change bef
ore warning her of potential disaster? Because of course one wouldn’t like to deliver that news in a less-than-pristine state.”
The guard accepted that, but then he turned the analysis on Claire and Shane. “And them?”
“With me,” he said. “Entourage. You know.”
“Backpack,” the second guard said to Shane, and gestured. He hesitated. “Now.”
“Oh, give it up. I told you we couldn’t use those anyway,” Myrnin said. “Do it. Quickly. We have little time left, for heaven’s sake.”
The guards were ignoring him now, focused on Shane and the potentially lethal contents of his bag, and as soon as they’d turned away from him, Myrnin reached out, grabbed each of the guards by the side of the head, and knocked them together, hard. Claire shuddered at the sound of bone crunching. Both men dropped to the carpet, twitching.
“Come on,” Myrnin said. “They won’t be down for long. But don’t worry, their brains aren’t complicated enough to be damaged.”
“But—”
“Claire, we do not have time.” He grabbed her by the arm and dragged her along at a run, past closed doorways, painted portraits, flickering lights…
And into an open doorway.
Amelie’s assistant rose to her feet in alarm at the sight of them and bared her teeth, and Myrnin bared his in turn. “Announce me,” he said, and then shook his head. “Never mind; I’ll do it myself.”
He lowered his shoulder and ran at the inner door. The lock broke, and the door swung open…
On Amelie, held in Oliver’s arms. Not as a hostage, as Claire originally thought, but in a position that could only be called, ah, intimate. That was one hell of a kiss in progress, and there were fewer clothes than might be strictly formal.
The kiss broke off as Myrnin came to a sliding halt in the remains of the door, with Shane and Claire close behind, and said, “Well, this is awkward. Beg pardon, but I believe Claire has something to tell you.”